Moscow's Meschansky court has ruled former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty of having misappropriated revenues from the sale of apatite concentrate, the Itar-Tass news agency reported Monday. According to the prosecutors, Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev, who were actually running the Apatite Company between 2000 and 2003, sold the company's products at reduced prices to foreign firms controlled by them. After that, the products were re-sold on the world market at prices twice of the originals.

In this way, net profits of the Apatite Company were much smaller than they should have been, and its shareholders, including the state, did not receive the due dividends, the report said.

Under Russia's law, the prison term for this crime is five to ten years.

The 41-year-old Khodorkovsky, former head of the Yukos oil company, was arrested 17 months ago and has been held in jail since. He and his partner Lebedev, 46, have been charged with 11 counts of fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement under seven articles in the Russian criminal code.

The Meschansky District Court on May 17 started the first session of reading verdict to Khodorkovsky and the verdict-reading has entered its sixth day on Monday.

The oral reading of the verdict by three judges is expected to last in a week time, as the final sentence is to come only at the end of the process. There are hundreds of pages apparently having yet to be read.

Source: Xinhua