Legal News

Russian Oil Baron, Jailed in Siberia by Putin, Applies for Early Parole

By Dan Slater

Here’s an interesting piece of modern Russian legal history: In 2006, oil company Yukos, once Russia’s largest private company, was re-nationalized by then-President Vladimir Putin — a move that many saw as retribution for the counter-Kremlin political activities of Yukos chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Whatever the reason, Khodorkovsky sat in a Siberian jail while his company was hacked up and distributed in a series of bankruptcies and fire-sales. The main Yukos production unit was handed to state-owned Rosneft.

But now Putin is gone — well, sorta — and, as we’ve noted before, Russia’s new prez, Dmitri Medvedev (Leningrad State University Law), is making a show of cleaning up the country’s courts. As the NYT reports, one of the early beneficiaries of this legal reform could be former Yukos chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest person.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev

(LB Trivia: Now Russia’s richest person is said to be Roman Abramovich — owner of the Chelsea soccer club and governor of Chukotka — whom many believe bears a striking resemblance to the Law Blog.)

According to the NYT, yesterday, Khodorkovsky’s lawyers filed a request for his early parole, hoping to take advantage, they said, of the Kremlin’s “course towards guaranteeing real independent courts.” Yuri M. Schmidt, a lawyer for Khodorkovsky, said, “We have examples of decisions and actions by the courts that three months ago we could not have dreamt of.”

Khodorkovsky became eligible for parole in October 2007, after serving half his eight-year sentence for tax evasion. Why wait so long to file for parole? His lawyers reportedly that several infractions of prison rules — including hoarding “unauthorized” lemons in his cell — had prevented his early release.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 17, 2008 (boomark / email).