MOSCOW, February 11 - RAPSI. The Moscow City Court will consider on February 25 an appeal on lifting the arrest from the property of a late YUKOS executive, lawyer Gevorg Dangyan told RAPSI on Monday.

The prosecutors have filed their third appeal against the ruling to release the seized house and car that belonged to Vasily Aleksanyan, who died in 2011.

The Simonovsky District Court lifted the arrest on the property for the third time on December 11 upon the request of the Aleksanyan family.

The verdict stated that the case against Aleksanyan was closed in 2010 as the statute of limitations had expired and there was no need to hold the property further.
Aleksanyan died on October 3, 2011 at the age of 39. He was arrested in 2006 with other Yukos executives on charges of stealing property from Tomskneft and shares in refineries and oil-producing companies owned by the Eastern Oil Company.

Aleksanyan spent 2.5 years in prison. His lawyers asked for his pretrial conditions to be reconsidered due to his poor health, but his custodial sentence was extended instead. On February 8, 2008, the former executive was moved from the pretrial detention center to an outside oncology ward. In summer 2010, the court terminated the case proceedings as the statute of limitations had expired. He was never convicted or acquitted.

The YUKOS case has been one of the most high-profile in Russia in recent years. In the early 2000s, the authorities accused executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev of economic crimes. YUKOS, then the country's largest oil company, went bankrupt and its assets were taken over by Rosneft. Many in the West believe the case was politically driven, although Moscow denies the charges.

In 2005, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud and tax evasion. In late 2010, a Moscow district court sentenced them to 14 years in prison for oil theft and money laundering. They were expected to be released in 2017, considering the time that they had already served for their previous convictions from their first trial. However, the Moscow City Court reduced their sentences by one year on May 24.