A Moscow court sentenced today a former security chief for Russia's Yukos oil company to 20 years in prison for murder and attempted murder, making it the first verdict in a long and complicated legal saga.
Mr Pichugin was convicted last week of carrying out two murders in 2002, as well as an attack on the head of the Moscow mayor's communication service. His lawyers are appealing against his conviction
Analysts have been closely watching the sentencing of Pichugin for an indication of how harshly the courts will treat his former boss and billionaire founder of YUKOS, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is on trial for tax evasion and fraud.
Khodorkovsky's long-running trial has been accompanied by the fall of YUKOS, which is now close to collapse, broken by a $27.5 billion back-tax claim and stripped by the state of its biggest oil-producing unit.
Tax collectors also petitioned the court to enforce a claim against Khodorkovsky and co-defendant Platon Lebedev for more than $700m.
The tax authorities contend that four firms profiting illegally from tax breaks available in some Russian regions were under the control of the two men.
Khodorkovsky's defence team has called the case a politically motivated show trial to punish the magnate for posing a political threat to President Vladimir Putin.
Khodorkovsky's arrest at gun-point 18 months ago stunned investors who had come to regard YUKOS as a blue-chip stock and a model of management for other Russian firms to follow.
But many Russians regard Khodorkovsky as a robber baron who - with two dozen other entrepreneurs -- snatched vast mineral resources in murky privatisations in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
