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Yukos Lawyer Sentenced to 7 Years

Svetlana Bakhmina leaving the Simonovsky District Court on Oct. 17, 2005. Mikhail Fomichyov
Judges at Moscow's Simonovsky District Court on Wednesday sentenced Svetlana Bakhmina, a former deputy head of Yukos' legal department, to seven years in prison after finding her guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion.

A mother of two young children, Bakhmina, 36, is the latest in a series of several senior Yukos officials to be jailed since the company came under attack three years ago. Last year, the company's former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were handed sentences of eight years in prison on tax evasion and fraud charges.

The length of the prison term makes Bakhmina ineligible for release under a current amnesty for mothers sentenced to prison terms of six years or less.

"They did it on purpose, so the amnesty would not apply," said Pavel Ivlev, a friend of Bakhmina's and a lawyer with ties to Yukos who left Russia for New York in the fall of 2004, citing fears of prosecution. "This means that as well as the 1 1/2 years she has already been in jail, she will have to serve a minimum of 2 1/2 years more in jail" before becoming eligible for parole, Ivlev said.

The judges found Bakhmina guilty of embezzling some 8 billion rubles ($290 million) of assets belonging to Yukos subsidiary Tomskneft in the late 1990s. Bakhmina has denied the charges since her arrest on Dec. 8, 2004.

Judges on Wednesday refused to give Bakhmina a suspended sentence, which would have left her formally convicted but would free her from jail. Courts have the option of freeing mothers of young children on compassionate grounds.

Bakhmina has two sons -- Fyodor, 4, and Grigory, 8.

Ivlev said that he was sure that Bakhmina had done nothing wrong.

"Just because the system finds it unpleasant to acknowledge its mistakes, they decided that she should stay in jail," Ivlev said.

Late Wednesday, there appeared to be some confusion regarding the kind of prison Bakhmina would be sent to.

In reading the sentence, the chief judge said Bakhmina was to be sent to a maximum-security prison. Prosecutor Nikolai Vlasov, who represented the Prosecutor General's Office in the case, said later, however, that the judge should have said Bakhmina would be sent to a standard prison.

"I think a technical mistake took place and the court in fact sentenced her to standard imprisonment. The judge must have made a slip of the tongue," Vlasov said, Interfax reported. He did not explain how he knew the contents of the verdict.

Vlasov said prosecutors would not dispute Wednesday's ruling.

"I think that the court was able to sort out a complicated criminal case and made a fair decision," he said.

Bakhmina's defense team said it would appeal the verdict and the sentence.

"Of course we will appeal the verdict," Bakhmina's lawyer Olga Kozyreva told reporters after the verdict and sentence were delivered Wednesday, Interfax reported.

Throughout her detention and trial, Bakhmina argued that her position at Yukos had not given her the powers to make it possible for her to commit the crimes she was accused of.

In her final address to the court before the verdict was read out, Bakhmina pleaded with the judges to deliver a fair verdict. She also said that whatever she did while working at Yukos, she did it at the request of her superiors.

"I was not empowered to make any decision on my own. ... I did not have the power of attorney," she told the judges, Interfax reported.

Bakhmina is the first woman to be jailed in the series of prosecutions against Yukos employees and executives that began in 2003.

Since Bakhmina's detention, investigators have appeared to show little regard for the plight of her children. Last year, Bakhmina went on a hunger strike after her custodians in a Moscow pre-trial detention center refused to allow her to make paid telephone calls to her sons.

Ivlev on Wednesday called the authorities' actions against Yukos and some of its employees a crime.

"All these people -- people in the Kremlin, the judges, the investigators -- are committing crimes. And it is they who should answer before the law," Ivlev said by telephone.

A total of 35 people -- Yukos owners, employees and subcontractors -- have so far been charged, arrested or convicted, according to Khodorkovsky's online press center. In the most recent development, prosecutors earlier this month arrested Vasily Aleksanyan, Bakhmina's former boss at Yukos' legal department. At the time of his arrest, Aleksanyan had just been appointed executive vice president and was the company's most senior employee in Moscow.

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