Vladimir Malakhovsky, the former CEO of a number of Yukos subsidiaries, whose sentence was reduced earlier this year, was released yesterday.

Malakhovsky had been sentenced to 12 years in prison in March 2007 for alleged large-scale theft committed by an organized group and alleged money laundering. According to the investigators, Malakhovsky and his so-called ‘accomplices’ stole oil from themselves, amounting to 13 billion dollars.

After 7 years and 10 months, were, in truth, stolen from his life by prisons and trials, including lengthy pre-trial detention, he was released from Nizhegorodsky District Colony, after his lawyers identified changes in Russia’s criminal code.

In August 2010 Malakhovsky testified in the Khamovnichesky Court at the trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev; in response to the possibility of stealing all the oil from Yukos subsidiaries he said “It is hard to imagine a bigger nonsense”.