| 2011-12-15 17:08 Don't provoke protesters, ex-minister Kudrin tells Putin |
Russia’s ex-finance minister Alexei Kudrin criticized on Thursday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s remarks regarding the white ribbons worn by protesters at recent nationwide rallies against alleged electoral fraud.
American director Woody Allen began shooting his latest movie in Paris on Monday.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday said a European Parliament resolution calling for new State Duma elections “means nothing.” 
After Wimbledon Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova came to Belarus. 
New charges for Mikhail Khodorkovsky · 2007-02-06 11:28
Russian prosecutors charged Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Yukos tycoon, with money-laundering and embezzlement on Monday, thwarting his chances for parole this year as 2008 presidential elections loom.
Mr Khodorkovsky's lawyers said prosecutors had charged Mr Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, his business partner, with embezzling and laundering about $20bn in Yukos revenues ??“ accusations they said were "insane" and part of a witch-hunt.
"Khodorkovsky was ready for everything, but he did not expect the charges to go beyond the realm of the sane," Yuri Shmidt, one of the businessman's lawyers, said. "It is impossible to hide such sums from accounts. This is higher than the company's entire revenue."
According to Financial Times, the charges come as the Kremlin clamps down on opposition parties ahead of parliamentary elections in 2007 and presidential elections in 2008.
Mr Khodorkovsky, who was sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison camp in 2005 in a case criticised as political, would have been eligible for parole in October 2007 after serving half his term since his arrest in 2003. The money-laundering charges could increase his sentence to up to 15 years.
• Interdepartmental group against corruption is formed
• Mikhail Gorbachev asked Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates
|
|
|