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Platon Leonidovich Lebedev (Russian: Плато́н Леони́дович Ле́бедев; born 29 November 1956) is a Russian businessman and former CEO of Group Menatep. He was convicted of tax evasion, money laundering and embezzlement by Russian courts in two cases and imprisoned from July 2003 to January 2014. He is best known as a close associate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Since 1997, Lebedev holds a stake of about 7 percent in Group Menatep Limited, now GML Limited. Holding company GML Limited controls 51% of Yukos shares. The other four ultimate beneficial owners of GML Limited are Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Brudno, Vladimir Dubov and Vasily Shakhnovsky.
On 31 May 2005, Lebedev was convicted of tax evasion in 2005, and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was subsequently charged with embezzlement and money laundering in 2009, and pleaded not guilty to the charges. There has been speculation that these charges were politically motivated.
On 27 December 2010, Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky were each sentenced to 13 years in prison for money laundering and embezzlement. In the second case against them, they were found guilty of organizing a criminal group in the oil business, embezzling 218 million tonnes of oil from Yukos' oil extraction subsidiary companies, Uganskneftegaz, Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz.
In December 2013 Khodorkovsky was released while Lebedev was released on 24 January 2014. "A short prison sentence might be considered a victory for Mr. Putin's protégé, President Dmitry A. Medvedev, a former law professor who is thought of as less of a hard-liner. Mr. Medvedev has been promoting policies to modernize Russia, and analysts say the Khodorkovsky case is an obstacle toward convincing foreign investors that the country's legal system is fair."
On 24 May 2011, Lebedev and Khodorkovsky were named prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, which criticized the men's second trial and called for their release on the expiry of their initial sentences.
On 7 August 2012, Lebedev's 13-year sentence was reduced by 3 years and 4 months by a district court judge in the Arkhangelsk region city of Velsk, where Lebedev had been imprisoned. This action came as a result of the prosecutor's office requesting a re-qualification of Lebedev's offenses due to the passage of a new legal statute in the Russian Criminal Code which reduced the punishment for offenses of which he had been convicted.
On 25 October 2013, the Berlin International Literature Festival held a worldwide reading in solidarity with Platon Lebedev and all criminals who allege they are political prisoners in Russia.
In February 2015, Lebedev announced his first press conference after his release from prison in Moscow on 18 February 2015.
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