Economic amnesty does not apply to Khodorkovsky, Lebedev – lawyer

(Interfax – MOSCOW. June 25, 2013) Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev are not eligible for the economic amnesty, their defense said.

“As we have suspected, although hope dies last, this amnesty was not intended to release Khodorkovsky and Lebedev,” Lebedev’s lawyer Vladimir Krasnov told Interfax on Tuesday.

“Comparing what was planned at the start and what happened in the end: great cry and little wool,” Krasnov said.

“The amnesty of even one or ten persons is a good cause. But what an amnesty it is. A person commits one’s first crime and repays the damage. Everything this amnesty is about is already envisaged by law. It was the question of big cases that caused big damage,” Krasnov said.

People who compensate the damage to become eligible for the amnesty will be unable to prove their innocence in court. “Compensation of the damage means active repentance, i.e. confession of one’s guilt, which deprives a person of the right to appeal, including an appeal lodged with the European Court of Human Rights,” the lawyer said.

The draft resolution on the economic amnesty was published on Tuesday.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were sentenced to 13 years in two trials. Their sentences were later reduced to eleven years. Their prison term ends in 2014.