The European Court of Human Rights has given a judgment in the case Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev v Russia.
The case concerned criminal proceedings which ended in a judgment of September 2005 by the Moscow City Court in which Mr Khodorkovskiy and Mr Lebedev, two former top-managers and major shareholders of a large industrial
group, were found guilty of large-scale tax evasion and fraud. The Court held that there had been no violation of Article 7 (no punishment without law) regarding the application of the tax law to convict the applicants, which the Court considered reasonable and corresponded to a common-sense understanding of tax evasion. The Court held that there had been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property) on account of the arbitrary way in which Mr Khodorkovskiy had been ordered to reimburse tax arrears owed by Yukos to the State following his conviction.
No. 11082/06 and 13772/05
2