MOSCOW, September 12 (RIA Novosti) - Lawyers of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev have asked Moscow City Court's criminal judicial board to cancel a hearing on charges against their clients, Khodorkovsky's Web site reported.
The defense lawyers said the hearing scheduled for September 14 was, firstly, a direct infringement of the law on the procedure for scheduling cassation hearings, and, secondly, contravened the procedure for notifying parties of the hearing date.
"According to the law, the hearing of a criminal case is set not by the court of original jurisdiction, but by the judge of the appellate court, and not before this court has received the case... Despite these legal requirements, the hearing date of this affair was not set after the appellation court had received the criminal case with cassation appeals and was not set by the judge of this court," the lawyers said in a statement.
The lawyers have drawn attention to the fact that they were not sent the original transcript of the court session but an unauthenticated document that was not an accurate transcription.
"We consider these actions by the court to be unlawful and a crude infringement on the rights of Mr. Khodorkovsky and Mr. Lebedev, and the rights of their defense," the lawyers said. The lawyers are demanding that hearings against Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, and Andrei Kraynov (also charged in the Yukos affair) be suspended and scheduled in accordance with the law, i.e. not earlier than 14 days after the parties have been informed of the time and place of the hearing.
In May, a Moscow district court sentenced Khodorkovsky and former Menatep CEO Lebedev to nine years in prison after finding them guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion.
