A Moscow court postponed on Wednesday the announcement of the verdict on the former chief of Russian oil giant Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The court's decision to postpone the verdict was made public ina notice put up at the court's front door. The notice gave no reason for the delay.

An aide to the chairman of the Meshchansky court said the verdict on Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev has been postponed until May 16, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Court sources cited the judge's failure to finish writing the verdict as the reason for the delay, according to Itar-Tass.

Khodorkovsky's lawyer Igor Mikheyev was quoted by Interfax as saying the lawyers have been informed of the delay by the court secretary.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are charged with large-scale fraud, tax evasion, ignoring court rulings and forging documents. Both men have been in jail for more than a year while the hearing proceeds and both have pleaded innocent to all charges against them.

The prosecution has demanded a 10-year sentence for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.

The court completed the trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev on April 10 and set April 27 as the date to hand down their verdict.

Yukos, once Russia's top oil company, has been all but crushed by a legal onslaught involving back taxes and charges of fraud and tax evasion against its founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In a fresh blow to Yukos earlier this month, the Moscow Arbitration Court seized the assets in its main subsidiaries in response to a lawsuit brought by its former subsidiary Yuganskneftegaz.

The court seized the shares in Samaraneftegas and Tomskneft, aswell as the shares of six other smaller subsidiaries.

Yuganskneftegaz, now owned by state-run Rosneft oil company, alleged Yukos bought oil from it at below market prices and is claiming more than 163 billion rubles (5.9 billion US dollars) in damages against Yukos.

Yuganskneftegaz, which accounted for more than 60 percent of Yukos' oil output, was auctioned off in December against a crippling 28-billion-dollar back-tax bill on Yukos.

Source: Xinhua