The consideration of a request for parole from Platon Lebedev, the business partner and associate of jailed oil tycoon and outspoken Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has been set for July 26-27, a spokeswoman for the Arkhangelsk Regional Court said on Friday.
On Monday, Lebedev was returned to the Velsk Penal Colony in Russia's northwestern Arkhangelsk region.
"The parole request will be considered [by the court of Velsk] on June 26," spokeswoman Ksenia Solovyova said, adding that the process of consideration may take two or more days.
Speaking to Moscow's court last week, Lebedev, who was found guilty late last year along with Khodorkovsky of stealing billions of dollars from their own oil firm Yukos and laundering the proceeds, said that his detention last year was illegally extended.
The court however upheld Judge Viktor Danilkin's decision to keep Lebedev in custody between May 17 and August 17, 2010.
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had been nearing the end of a separate eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion from their 2005 trial when they were told that they would have to stay in jail until 2017 in a widely condemned trial in December.
A Moscow court upheld the two men's second conviction, but cut their sentences by a year. Amnesty International subsequently recognized Khodorkovsky and Lebedev as prisoners of conscience.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, claims the charges against him are revenge for his funding of opposition parties during the presidency of Vladimir Putin, something the government denies.
The European Court of Human Rights said last month the ex-Yukos bosses' first trial was not politically motivated but said there were numerous violations of Khodorkovsky's conditions of detention after his arrest in October 2003.
