page_title: Mikhail Khodorkovsky
section_title: Release
hierarchical_section_title: Mikhail Khodorkovsky / Criminal charges and incarceration / Release
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Указ о помиловании Ходорковского М.Б. English: Executive Order On Granting Pardon to Mikhail Khodorkovsky
context_page_description: Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is an exiled Russian businessman, philanthropist and former oligarch, now residing in London. In 2003, Khodorkovsky was believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, with a fortune estimated to be worth $15 billion, and was ranked 16th on Forbes list of billionaires. He had worked his way up the Komsomol apparatus, during the Soviet years, and started several businesses during the period of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the mid-1990s, he accumulated considerable wealth by obtaining control of a number of Siberian oil fields unified under the name Yukos, one of the major companies to emerge from the privatization of state assets during the 1990s.
  In October 2003, he was arrested by Russian authorities and charged with fraud. The government under Russian president Vladimir Putin then froze shares of Yukos shortly thereafter on tax charges. Putin's government took further actions against Yukos, leading to a collapse of the company's share price and the evaporation of much of Khodorkovsky's wealth. In May 2005, he was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison.
context_section_description: According to his official site, Khodorkovsky would have been eligible for early release, but an alleged conspiracy involving jail guards and a cellmate resulted in a statement that he had violated one of the prison rules. This was sufficient for him to forfeit his rights, once the statement was logged in his file.
  It was predicted that he might be released by the middle of 2011, although Khodorkovsky was found guilty on 27 December 2010 of fresh charges of embezzlement and money laundering, which had the potential of leading to a new sentence of up to 22.5 years. "The second as well as the first case were organized by Igor Sechin", he said in an interview with The Sunday Times from a remand prison in the Siberian city of Chita, 4,000 miles (6,400 km) east of Moscow.
  On 22 August 2008, he was denied parole by Judge Igor Faliliyev, at the Ingodinsky district court in Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai. The basis for this was in part because Khodorkovsky "refused to attend jail sewing classes".
  In the second trial, the prosecutors asked the judge for a 14-year sentence, which was just one year less than the maximum. The judge, Danilkin, handed down the verdict on 30 December 2010 in which he upheld the prosecutors' statements. Taking into account the time already served, Khodorkovsky was to be released in 2017. U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned or expressed concern over Khodorkovsky's extended sentence. The White House said it brought Russia's legal system into question.
  On 15 February 2011, Vyacheslav Lebedev, chairman of Russia's Supreme Court, suggested reviving an old Soviet practice under which a maximum sentence for a person charged with different crimes should not exceed the sentence attached to the most serious charge: in Khodorkovsky's case, nine years. Since he has been in jail since October 2003, this would have meant releasing him in October 2012, which did not happen.
  On 5 March 2012, the day after Putin won his third term as president of Russia, President Medvedev ordered a review of Khodorkovsky's sentence.
  In December 2012, a Moscow court reduced Khodorkovsky's prison sentence by two years, so that he was due to be released in 2014. In the same court case Khodorkovsky's business partner Platon Lebedev had his prison sentence reduced by two years. The 2010 case would have had them released 13 years after the day of their arrests in 2003.
caption: Presidential Decree No.922 granting pardon to Mikhail Khodorkovsky on 20 December 2013
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