ABC News: Report: Khodorkovsky Is Sent to Prison

Khodorkovsky Is Sent to Prison to Serve Eight-Year Sentence on Various Charges, Report Says

MOSCOW Oct 10, 2005 — Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to the prison where he will serve out his 8-year sentence on charges including tax evasion and fraud, the Interfax news agency reported Monday.

Interfax quoted a lawyer for Khodorkovsky's jailed colleague Platon Lebedev, Yevgeny Baru, as saying that he had tried to visit his client in a Moscow jail on Monday but been refused. Instead, he was allowed to speak with Fikret Tagiyev, the director of the jail, who said "'They have been taken away,'" Baru was quoted as saying.

Tagiyev told Baru that Khodorkovsky's and Lebedev's families would be notified by mail about where the two inmates have been taken, Interfax reported.

Interfax said the Federal Penitentiary Service had confirmed that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had been sent to their respective prisons. It did not indicate their location.

Baru speculated that the two had been sent to prison over the weekend.

Lawyer Yury Schmidt confirmed to The Associated Press that when members of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev's legal team tried to speak with their clients at the prison the head of the jail told them that neither were there, and that their relatives had been notified by letter of their location.

In a statement posted on the Web site of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, lawyer Anton Drel said, "There are two variants: either Khodorkovsky and Lebedev have been transferred to another prison, or they have been dispatched to a (prison) colony. At present we are trying to learn the location of our clients," Drel said.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are serving 8-year sentences. Observers call the case and parallel dismantling of Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil empire punishment for the political aspirations of Russia's once-richest man.

AP via ABC News, 10.10.2005