Prosecutor Calls for Lebedev Sentence to be Cut

© RIA Novosti . Andrey Stenin / Go to the mediabankPlaton Lebedev
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A prosecutor has called for the sentence handed to former Menatep owner Platon Lebedev to be reduced at a hearing on Tuesday.

A prosecutor has called for the sentence handed to former Menatep owner Platon Lebedev to be reduced at a hearing on Tuesday.

Lebedev is serving a total of 13 years for tax evasion and embezzlement related to the former Yukos oil company, which he ran with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was convicted alongside him.

The prosecutor said it was necessary to requalify Lebedev's offenses in line with a new legal statute in the Russian Criminal Code which reduced the punishment for his offenses.

If the motion is approved, Lebedev’s prison term will be reduced by almost three years, to 11 years and three months, and his release will be scheduled for October 2014.

"Taking into account the nature and the extent of the public threat, I think there are no grounds to reduce the sentence to the time already served," the prosecutor said. “Thereby, I request to satisfy in part this motion by Lebedev’s defense.”

Earlier in the day, another Russian court ruled to release former Yukos Deputy Manager Alexei Kurtsin on parole.

Kurtsin was sentenced to 15.5 years in a maximum security prison in January 2010, but the Moscow City Court softened the sentence after criminal legislation was liberalized and the offence was reclassified.

In June, The Moscow City Court mitigated Kurtsin’s punishment to 12.5 years at a medium security prison for embezzling Yukos’s money and ordered him to pay a fine of one million rubles ($34,000).

Legal proceedings launched against Yukos in 2003, which many view as politically motivated, resulted in convictions for many executives and shareholders of what was Russia's largest oil producer, including its founder and CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

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