Oil tycoon Khodorkovsky begins eight-year prison sentence

Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent to the prison where he will serve out his eight-year sentence on charges including tax evasion and fraud, the Interfax news agency reported today.

Interfax quoted a lawyer for Khodorkovsky’s jailed colleague Platon Lebedev, Yevgeny Baru, as saying that he had tried to visit his client in a Moscow jail today but been refused.

Instead, he was allowed to speak with Fikret Tagiyev, the director of the jail, who said “They have been taken away,” Baru was quoted as saying.

Tagiyev told Baru that Khodorkovsky’s and Lebedev’s families would be notified by mail about where the two inmates have been taken, Interfax reported.

Baru speculated that the two had been sent to prison over the weekend.