Platon Lebedev - Conviction

Conviction

Lebedev was convicted of tax evasion in 2005, and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was subsequently charged with embezzlement and money laundering in 2009, and pled not guilty to the charges. There has been speculation that these charges were politically motivated. On December 27, 2010, Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky were sentenced again, and will likely spend several more years in jail. "A short prison sentence might be considered a victory for Mr. Putin’s protégé, President Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former law professor who is thought of as less of a hard-liner. Mr. Medvedev has been promoting policies to modernize Russia, and analysts say the Khodorkovsky case is an obstacle toward convincing foreign investors that the country’s legal system is fair."

On 24 May 2011, Lebedev and Khodorkovsky were named prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, which criticized the men's second trial and called for their release on the expiry of their initial sentences.

On 7 August 2012, Lebedev's 13-year sentence was reduced by 3 years and 4 months by a district court judge in the Arkhangelsk region city of Velsk, where Lebedev is imprisoned. This action came as a result of the prosecutor's office requesting a re-qualification of Lebedev's offenses due to the passage of a new legal statute in the Russian Criminal Code which reduced the punishment for offenses of which he had been convicted.