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Khodorkovsky Faces 20 Years in Jail on New Charges

 Russian prosecutors have filed new charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky that his lawyer said may add 20 years to the jailed former OAO Yukos Oil Co. billionaire’s sentence.Khodorkovsky, who is due to be released in 2011, was charged with laundering more than $28 billion and stealing 350 million tons (48 million barrels) of oil, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office said today in a faxed statement. He is currently serving eight years in a Siberian jail for fraud and tax evasion.

“There’s nothing fair about this case,” Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer for Khodorkovsky, said today in a Bloomberg Television interview. “I don’t think they’re even trying to make these new charges look real.”

Khodorkovsky’s defense team has been hopeful of winning his early release since Dmitry Medvedev, a 42-year-old St. Petersburg lawyer, took over as Russian president in May. The state’s campaign against Khodorkovsky, whose Yukos company was bankrupted and sold to state-owned companies, has come under widespread criticism in the West.

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