Khodorkovsky found guilty in second trial, could face more prison time

An imprisoned business tycoon whose legal troubles have come to symbolize the limits of political freedom in Vladimir Putin’s Russia was found guilty Monday of stealing oil from his own company and is likely to face another decade behind bars.

Inside a Moscow courtroom, Judge Viktor Danilkin began reading the lengthy verdict against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partner, Platon Lebedev, in a rapid, almost inaudible monotone, not even pausing to look up. On the snowy street outside, several hundred supporters held portraits of the 47-year-old Khodorkovsky and demanded that he be freed.

The verdict agreed with prosecutors that Khodorkovsky, formerly the head of the Yukos oil company, and Lebedev had embezzled the equivalent of $27 billion worth of oil from their company. It said they had “created an illusion of a market mechanism to set oil purchase prices to hide the illegal documentation of the unfair deals and eventually to steal the oil.”

Many Russians have concluded that Khodorkovsky’s long legal troubles are largely the result of a political vendetta by Putin, and have also helped concentrate wealth in the hands of Kremlin insiders. Khodorkovsky has said repeatedly that he was persecuted for supporting the political opposition soon after Putin took over as president in 2000. Putin, who is now prime minister, is still considered the most powerful man in the country.

The businessman is nearing the end of an eight-year sentence for tax evasion and fraud, but it has been widely anticipated in Russia that authorities would find a way to keep him behind bars.

Referring to Khodorkovsky, Putin said in recent weeks that “a thief should sit in prison.”

Khodorkovsky became fabulously wealthy in the lax atmosphere that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union. Assets that once belonged to the state fell into the hands of a small class of businessmen who became known as Russia’s “oligarchs.”

He turned to politics and social action, encouraging parties that sought a Western-style democracy as well as the successors to the Soviet Communists in a bid to foster a more open political system. He financed orphanages and funded university programs.

Many of the oligarchs have faced prosecution or been forced to leave the country as Putin has reasserted central control. The defense insisted during the trial that Khodorkovsky’s business activity was legal at the time.

His lawyer Karina Moskalenko described the trial as “a theater of the absurd.”

“The main message is clear: Our leaders are doing their best to keep Khodorkovsky away as long as possible,” she said in an interview. “We will certainly appeal the verdict; no question about it.”

The Obama administration, which has made improving relations with Russia one of its main foreign policy goals and last week pushed ratification of a nuclear arms treaty with Moscow through the Senate, quickly criticized the verdict.

“Today’s conviction in the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev on charges of embezzlement and money laundering raises serious questions about selective prosecution — and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. “This and similar cases have a negative impact on Russia’s reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations and improving its investment climate.”

The White House said President Obama had spoken frequently with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about Khodorkovsky’s case.

The reading of the entire verdict may take several more days, and no sentence was imposed Monday. But it seemed clear that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev would face more prison time.

Prosecutors asked for 14-year terms for both men on the new charges. Considering how much time has passed since the charges were filed, they could be imprisoned for as much as 10 years after their current terms expire next year.

In a live television call-in show this month, Putin compared Khodorkovsky to Bernard Madoff, the U.S. financier who was sentenced to prison for running a long-term Ponzi scheme.

“Mr. Madoff in the U.S.A. got 150 years of imprisonment for the analogous crime, which involved about the same sum of money,” Putin said. “We must proceed from the fact that Khodorkovsky’s crimes were proved in court.”

Putin also implied that Khodorkovsky could be held accountable for the slaying of a Siberian mayor and two other contract killings. The former Yukos security chief was sentenced to life in prison for those crimes in 2007. “Did the [company’s] security chief commit all these murders on his own initiative?” Putin asked.

Khodorkovsky’s defense and human rights groups considered Putin’s comments before the verdict to be unacceptable pressure on the court. Medvedev, Putin’s protege, aimed some careful criticism at Putin.

“As president, I think that neither the president nor any other state official has the right to express his opinion on this case or on any other case before the verdict is passed, “ Medvedev said during a live televised meeting Friday with the heads of three major, state-owned TV networks . “It is completely obvious.”

His statement gave Khodorkovsky supporters hope that was quickly dashed Monday.

“The verdict we hear today gives us the final answer about who is really in power in the country, Medvedev or Putin,” Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst and senior fellow at the Moscow-based System Analysis Institute, said in an interview. “Medvedev has no power and he is just being used by Putin to create an illusion of evolutionary changes in the Kremlin.”

“If the first trial at least resembled a legal process, the current trial has nothing to do with justice but everything to do with Putin’s personal vendetta against Khodorkovsky,” Piontkovsky added. “Putin made it clear that he will keep his political enemy No. 1 in prison as long as he chooses, and he is keeping his word.”

Experts said it was not accidental that the reading of the verdict, originally scheduled for Dec. 15, was postponed to the week between the Western Christmas and New Year’s holidays so that it would receive less attention abroad.

A group of more than three dozen Western dignitaries, including two former British foreign secretaries and three former French foreign ministers, wrote to Medvedev this month expressing concern about the case.

“As strong supporters of the drive to modernize Russia we cannot stand idly by when rule of law and human values are being so openly abused and compromised,” the letter said. “Stable and reliable partnerships with Russia can exist only where our fundamental common values are shared and applied: where human rights are protected, property rights are secure, and justice prevails over corruption.”

Khodorkovsky said in his closing remarks to the court in November that he was prepared to spend more years in prison. “For me, as for anybody, it is hard to live in jail and I don’t want to die there,” he said. “But if I have to, I will not hesitate, as the things I believe in are worth dying for.”

sergei.loiko@latimes.com