The testimony of Russia's former primer minister Mikhail Kasyanov in defense of jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was false, a judge has said, as day four of the verdict draws on.
Judge Viktor Danilkin also dismissed the testimony of Viktor Gerashchenko, the former head of Russia's Central Bank, as untruthful.
The testimonies of German Gref, head of the country's top lender Sberbank, and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko were ruled a "confirmation of the guilt" of Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev earlier this week.
Danilkin found Khodorkovsky, 47, and Lebedev, 54, guilty of stealing from their former oil firm Yukos and laundering the proceeds in a second trial on Monday.
Yukos covered its "double standard accounts" by publishing all reports on its website in English, Danilkin said, prompting laughter from Lebedev.
Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, said publishing reports does not exactly amount to hiding information.
The two businessmen have already spent seven years in jail for fraud and tax evasion from their 2005 trial.
The term of the new sentence is expected later today or early tomorrow, when Danilkin finishes reading the full 250-page verdict in the most significant trial since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The charges are widely viewed as trumped up and ordered by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to punish Khodorkovsky for funding the liberal opposition in the early 2000s, when Russia's man of action was president.
MOSCOW, December 30 (RIA Novosti)
