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.