MOSCOW — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon who was once Russia's richest man, was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison and ordered to pay much of his fortune in penalties in a case widely seen as a barometer of the country's commitment to private businesses and political freedoms.
A panel of three judges convicted the former Yukos Oil Co. chief executive on charges of fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement, ending a marathon, 12-day reading of the verdict.
The oil magnate's lawyers said they would mount an international campaign to gain legal and political support for appeals and accused Western leaders of ignoring human rights abuses in Russia because of the nation's status as a major oil supplier.
Co-defendant Platon Lebedev, Khodorkovsky's business partner and chairman of Group Menatep, was also sentenced to nine years, and both men were ordered to pay a total of $615 million in taxes and fines.
The verdict against the 41-year-old Khodorkovsky, the most famous of the handful of billionaire "oligarchs" who dominate Russia's post-communist economy, was swiftly condemned by defense lawyers and human rights activists, who said it marked a dispiriting step back toward Russia's totalitarian past.
"This case speaks to the toughness of a regime that doesn't hear the voice of society, doesn't hear the voice of intelligentsia, and a regime that has made another step toward its own doom," Lev Ponomarev, head of the organization For Human Rights, said outside the courthouse.
U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), who has sponsored a measure in Congress to suspend Russia's membership in the Group of 8 industrial nations, called the proceeding "a political trial before a kangaroo court, [which] has come to a shameful conclusion."
Lantos, in Russia for meetings with parliament members on a variety of issues, was ushered by a Khodorkovsky public relations agent and a U.S. Embassy official into the courthouse just after the sentence was pronounced. He predicted "tremendous congressional and public reaction" in the U.S. to the verdict.
"While we certainly want to maintain the very best relations with Russia that we can, it's self-evident that to label Russia under these conditions as a democratic country is inaccurate," he said.
In Washington, President Bush also expressed concern. "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," the president said of Khodorkovsky at a Rose Garden news conference.
