Prosecutors Seek Nine-Year Sentence For Yukos Lawyer

TheYukos logo on its headquarters (AFP) March 23, 2006 -- Prosecutors today asked a Moscow court to sentence to nine years in prison a lawyer who worked for the Yukos oil company

Svetlana Bakhmina is accused of embezzlement and tax fraud while allegedly stripping millions of dollars worth of assets from a major Yukos subsidiary, Tomskneft. She denies the charges.

Yukos officials say Bakhmina was detained in 2004 as a pawn to force more senior members of the company back to Russia from abroad.

Yukos has been broken apart by massive back tax claims, arrests, and the sale of its biggest production unit.

(Reuters, Interfax, ITAR-TASS)