Two former oil tycoons, Mikhail
Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, have been sentenced to 14 and 13.5 years in
prison, a Moscow judge announced Thursday.

Former Russian oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. (Photo: Internet)

The business partners were charged
with large-scale theft by an organized group and attempts to legalize stolen
property.

The terms the two men have already
been serving since 2005 for tax evasion and fraud will be included in their
total term, according to the sentence.

Khodorkovsky, convicted of stealing
oil from his own company and laundering the proceeds, and Lebedev were sentenced
to nine years of imprisonment in 2005 for tax evasion and fraud. Their sentences
were later reduced to eight years.

In 2009 when their first trial had
nearly drawn to an end, the two men were returned from the Siberian Chita region
to Moscow to face a second trial.

The Moscow court did not find any
grounds for passing a suspended sentence on the two men.

The judge considered “reasonable”
the prosecution’s calculations indicating that former Yukos head Khodorkovsky
and former Menatep head Lebedev stole more than 892 billion rubles (over 29
billion U.S. dollars) worth of oil “without physically passing on it.”

Lawyers for the two defendants said
they would appeal the guilty verdict in Moscow City Court.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has
dismissed Western criticism of the trial as unacceptable pressure.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet