THE judge in the trial of Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky said she would deliver her verdict on April 27.
As final pleas of innocence rang in her ears from the founder of oil giant Yukos, Judge Irina Kolesnikova retired to consider her verdict.
But even Mr Khodorkovsky’s lawyers do not expect him to win his ten-month court battle against charges of t
ax evasion and fraud.
Sceptics claim the case against Mr Khodorkovsky is no more than a ploy by the Kremlin to crush an opponent once hailed as Russia’s richest man.
Tax authorities have also crippled Yukos by freezing its assets, demanding almost £15 billion in back-taxes and selling off its major oil producing unit to help pay the bill.
"All this is being done for self-serving reasons. They have jailed me so I can’t stop them looting Yukos," Mr Khodorkovsky, who denies all the charges, said in his closing statement.
"I’m being held under arrest even though some of the most respected people in the country have spoken in my support."
Prosecutors have asked Judge Kolesnikova to hand down the maximum sentence of ten years in jail for Mr Khodorkovsky and his co- accused Platon Lebedev, a Yukos minority shareholder.
The magnate’s lawyers and relatives said they had no hope that he would avoid a guilty verdict.
"It would be obscene to talk about sentences but from the first I have said that he will be found guilty. Nothing I have seen and nothing I have heard has led me to a different opinion," said Robert Amsterdam, one of Mr Khodorkovsky’s lawyers.
Mr Khodorkovsky is a household name in Russia as one of the "oligarchs" - businessmen who amassed vast fortunes in the chaotic 1990s, when many Russians lost their savings and living standards plummeted.
The case of Mr Khodorkovsky, whose wealth was once estimated at about £8 billion, has become a cause célèbre for human rights groups who say Russia has subverted the rule of law in its determination to defeat him.
The two accused men have watched proceedings from a holding pen in the tiny court, often whispering jokes to each other and grimacing in mocking disbelief at statements from the blue-uniformed state prosecutors.
Mr Khodorkovsky has claimed that he is "not a proper oligarch", stating that he had "no yachts or racing cars".
He also said that a house he was said to own was not his, adding that his was "far smaller".
