MOSCOW, July 16 (RIA Novosti) - Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of bankrupt oil company Yukos, filed an application on Wednesday with a Siberian court requesting his early release.
Yury Schmidt, a lawyer for the former oligarch, stressed that the application for early release was "not an appeal for a pardon" and that it was not an "admission of guilt".
Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were found guilty of tax evasion and large-scale fraud by a Moscow court in May 2005 and sentenced to nine years in prison. The Moscow City Court later reduced their terms to eight years. They are both serving their sentences in Chita, East Siberia.
The founder of what was once Russia's largest oil producer is currently in a pre-trial detention center after prosecutors brought new charges against him and Lebedev of stealing 350 million metric tons of oil and laundering $28.3 billion.
The lawyer said that even if Khodorkovsky were to be granted an early release, the new charges mean that he would not be immediately freed.
The jailing of Khodorkovsky and other Yukos executives has been widely viewed in the West as part of the Kremlin's drive to regain lucrative energy assets, and to stamp out political dissent. Khodorkovsky has said he was punished for funding opposition parties.
Russian radical publicist Alexander Prokhanov said citing 'informed sources' on Wednesday that Khodorkovsky would be free in October in exchange for pledges not to engage in politics.
Speaking live on Ekho Moskvy radio station, Prokhanov said the businessman had accepted the deal.
