Guilty Verdict for a Tycoon, and Russia

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner, Platon Lebedev, right, after their verdict was read in a Moscow.

By JOE NOCERA
NYT

It took most of the week for Judge Viktor Danilkin to deliver the sentence against Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the former Russian tycoon.

On Monday morning, Judge Danilkin began reading his decision aloud, which is how decisions are rendered in Russia. Although it was instantly clear that he had found Mr. Khodorkovsky and his co-defendant, Platon L. Lebedev, guilty of embezzlement and money laundering, the written verdict was about 800 pages long; the judge didn’t finish until Thursday.

As Judge Danilkin droned on, Mr. Khodorkovsky, who had built and presided over Yukos, the biggest and best-run company in the country — and who has been imprisoned on a different set of charges since 2004 — listened impassively. Mr. Lebedev, his former business partner, read a book through much of it.

Finally, on Thursday afternoon, around 4 p.m. Moscow time, Judge Danilkin imposed his sentence. To no one’s surprise, it was harsh: 13 and a half years. Mr. Khodorkovsky, the judge said, needed to be “isolated from society.” Though he will get credit for time served, Mr. Khodorkovsky will probably be behind bars until 2017.

It is hard not to view the entire proceeding — the plausible-sounding embezzlement charges, the 18-month-long trial, the formal reading of the lengthy decision and so on — as an effort to create the illusion of fairness. Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, has compared Mr. Khodorkovsky to Bernard L. Madoff in an effort to make the charges sound more credible. But no one was fooled.

(More here.)