MOSCOW, May 31 -- Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison on fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion charges following a 10-month trial shadowed by claims that the Kremlin orchestrated the case to crush a potentially dangerous political opponent.
The guilty verdict against the man who was once Russia's richest citizen drew new criticism here and abroad as evidence that rule of law has yet to take root in the post-communist state.
"Here, you're innocent until proven guilty," President Bush said in Washington, "and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been judged guilty prior to having a fair trial." Bush said he had expressed his concern to President Vladimir Putin and that it would "be interesting to see" how an appeal proceeded.
The prosecution has been popular with the Russian public: Many people believe that the wealth of Khodorkovsky and other business magnates known as oligarchs was stolen in shady deals involving the sell-off of state industries in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Human rights groups and many business leaders say it highlights the arbitrary exercise of power in Putin's Russia, pointing out that many of the transactions at the heart of the case had been organized and approved at the time by the Russian government.
Attorneys for Khodorkovsky, 41, promised to make the conviction the centerpiece of a campaign to improve the quality of democracy in Russia.
"I believe this trial, as we all do, is an obscenity," Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian representing Khodorkovsky, said Sunday at a news conference. "It is emblematic of what Putinism is all about. Putinism is about the destruction of political space."
Khodorkovsky's business partner and co-defendant, Platon Lebedev, was also found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison. In addition, the two men were fined the equivalent of about $615 million.
The convictions followed the 12-day reading of a 1,000-page verdict by a three-judge panel in Moscow City Court.
"I think it is a testament to Basmanny justice," said Khodorkovsky, speaking from behind the bars of a courtroom cage where he has been confined during the proceeding. For government opponents, Basmanny Court in Moscow, where his case began, became a symbol of the corruption of the justice system.
"Not one normal sane person would understand what has been read out here," Lebedev said.
Later, in a statement released by another of his attorneys, Anton Drel, Khodorkovsky said: "The judicial system became a speechless appendage and a blind instrument of the state."
Attorneys for the two men promised to appeal.
