Moscow?s Meshchansky Court has found Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev guilty of corporate tax evasion, Itar-Tass reported.
The charge entails a prison term up to seven years in jail with a subsequent ban on senior state positions and running certain businesses for up to three years.
The Prosecutor General?s Office proved that Mikhail Khodorkovsky supervised the establishment of the Business Oil, Mitra, Wald-Oil and Forest-Oil groups on the territory of the Lesnoi administrative complex in the Sverdlovsk region that has a special regime and offers taxation privileges to corporate entities. According to the verdict, Khodorkovsky supervised an illegal deal involving promissory notes worth $189.7 million that was made on behalf of four dummy companies.
The amount of money Khodorkovsky failed to pay in corporate taxes in 1999 and 2000 totalled $623.5 million, the Prosecutor General?s Office said.
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Yukos Bosses Guilty
Meshchansky Court has found Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev guilty