MOSCOW, May 21 (RIA Novosti) - Russian prosecutors appealed Monday against a Moscow City Court ruling to transfer jailed former oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to Moscow for additional police inquiries.
The business partners were sentenced to eight years each for fraud and tax evasion in 2005. Recently the Russian authorities launched a new case against them, accusing them of large-scale money laundering.
Their defense lawyers have insisted that the money laundering charges cannot be legally investigated in the Siberian town of Chita, where Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are being held.
In mid-December of last year, Khodorkovsky and his business partner Lebedev were transferred to a pre-trial investigation center near the city of Chita over accusations of laundering money through the Open Russia Foundation, a private charity established by Khodorkovsky in 2001 to assist academic institutions and non-governmental organizations.
Khodorkovsky, who acquired oil assets through controversial privatization deals in the early-1990s, has insisted his prosecution was orchestrated by the authorities to silence his criticism of President Vladimir Putin and as part of a campaign to bring mineral assets under Kremlin control.
