A court in Moscow has sentenced in absentia a former lawyer of the now-defunct oil giant Yukos, Pavel Ivlev, who has been residing in the United States since 2004.
The Khamovniki district court on May 24 found Ivlev guilty of money laundering and embezzling $14 billion and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
Judge Marina Syrova also barred Ivlev from working as a lawyer in Russia for three years after serving his term.
Ivlev's lawyer, Sergei Kupreichenko, said the ruling will be appealed.
Once Russia's largest company, Yukos was dismantled after the 2003 arrest of its CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was later convicted of financial crimes at two trials that he and his supporters contend were engineered by the Kremlin to punish him for challenges to President Vladimir Putin and increase the Kremlin's control over oil export revenues.
The main production assets of Yukos were sold at auction and ended up in the hands of state oil company Rosneft.
Khodorkovsky spent 10 years in prison before he was released and left Russia after being pardoned by Putin in 2013.
