Khodorkovsky parole appeal quashed

The door banged shut on Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his request for parole once more as Moscow City Court found the lower court’s ruling to keep him inside was fair.

“The decisions by the Preobrazhensky court concerning the appeals and complaints of the defendant are valid and well-grounded,” Judge Yevgeniya Kolyshnitsyna said on Thursday, “We have found no violations.”

In May, Moscow’s Preobrazhensky district court rejected Khodorkovsky’s request for early release but cut his sentence by one year, leaving once Russia’s richest man in jail until 2016.

Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were jailed in 2005 for money laundering. In December, they were sentenced to another six years on additional charges. Both men deny the allegations against them and Khodorkovsky says the charges were the result of a political vendetta by the Kremlin in revenge for financing opposition groups.