Russian prosecutors have not ruled out that a third criminal case may be initiated against ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner Platon Lebedev, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said on Monday.
"Eighteen of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's accomplices are currently on a wanted list. If new criminal evidence is discovered in the search, investigative bodies will have to bring additional charges against them [Khodorkovsky and Lebedev] and hand the case over to court," prosecutors Valery Lakhtin and Gelchekhra Ibragimova told the paper.
Khodorkovsky, 47, and Lebedev, 54, were sentenced in December, 2010 to 14 years in jail after being found guilty of stealing from their former oil firm Yukos and laundering the proceeds.
The two men had been nearing the end of their eight-year sentences for fraud and tax evasion from their 2005 trial and will remain behind bars for another six years.
The prosecutors dismissed allegations by Russian opposition activists and Western observers that the trial against the former tycoon was politically motivated.
"Such allegations are nothing more than a PR stunt intended to distract public attention and build the image of a political prisoner," the prosecutors said.
The defendants' lawyers have also said a third set of charges could be brought.
"If they decided to declare the entire Yukos management an organized criminal group, they need to go ahead and dot all the i's," defense counsel Konstantin Rivkin said in November, 2010.
MOSCOW, January 24 (RIA Novosti)
