The Central Moscow Court yesterday found the former tycoon guilty of six of seven charges after an 11-month trial and a verdict that took judges 12 days to read out.

Khodorkovsky’s Yukos business associate, Platon Lebedev, was handed the same sentence, with Chief Judge Irina Kolesnikova saying the men had entered into an organised group with the aim of illegally appropriating other people's property and then selling those assets for their own gain. A third defendant, Andrei Krainov, received a 5½-year suspended sentence.

Outside the courtroom afterwards, defence lawyer Anton Drel said he would not criticise the judge, noting the pressure she had come under from initiators of the case.

A statement he read out said Khodorkovsky, 41, would appeal the sentence but devote his time in prison to various charitable and social works, including a proposed fund for aiding inmates. Also, Yukos would fight a series of court battles to keep the spotlight on doubts about the rule of law in Russia.

An un-named spokesman for the Prosecutor General's office said the oil magnate could face more charges as soon as they were prepared.

The year-long trial, which was the biggest in post-Soviet Russia, had made foreign investors anxious about doing business in Russia, with capital flight tripling in the 12 months since Khodorkovsky's arrest. The growth of oil exports had also slowed.

In Washington, President George W. Bush criticised Khodorkovsky's trial, saying it looked as if he had been judged guilty before having a fair trial.

Khodorkovsky, who was once estimated to have a US$15 billion fortune, was widely unpopular as one of the ‘oligarchs’ who became immensely wealth during the murky post-Soviet privatisation of government industries during the 1990s.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were ordered together to pay more than US$615 million for taxes and penalties the court found to be owed by companies they were involved in. Khodorkovsky was additionally ordered to pay US$42.5 million in income taxes and Lebedev to pay US$581,000.

There was some relief in the business world that the marathon trial had ended, with the Russian stock market's benchmark RTS index ring 0.8% to a five-week high of 672.88.

Yukos announced shortly after Khodorkovsky's sentencing that it had filed a court challenge to the production unit's sale and would seek US$11.6 billion in damages. A hearing was scheduled for 16 June.

Yukos also opened another legal front, filing in London a suit seeking billions of dollars in damages from the owners of the Sibneft oil company, charging them with bad faith for allegedly engineering the collapse of a planned 2003 merger of the two companies, the Interfax news agency reported.