UPDATE 1-Russian court sets Khodorkovsky release hearing

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By Chris Baldwin

MOSCOW, Aug 4 (Reuters) - A Russian court has set August 21 for an early-release appeal hearing for jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a spokeswoman for the local court in the Siberian city of Chita said on Monday.

Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, was sentenced in 2005 to eight years in prison for tax evasion and fraud. His trial was viewed by many as a climax of the Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to subdue politically ambitious business leaders.

The fate of Khodorkovsky's appeal for release, which follows new charges of embezzlement and money laundering, is broadly seen as a test of new President Dmitry Medvedev's stated commitment to establishing a "rule of law" within Russia.

In June, Medvedev told reporters in Germany that "the procedures for a pardon are open to any and all citizens convicted of one or another crime, including Khodorkovsky."

The 45-year old Khodorkovsky's lawyers said at the time that Medvedev's public pronouncement was not the driving force behind their latest legal move.

"This is not a request for absolution or amnesty. It is something all prisoners who have served their sentences apply for, and the majority ... receive a conditional release," Khodorkovsky's chief defence lawyer Yuri Schmidt said in July.

"FALSIFYING THE EVIDENCE"

In his appeal for early release to the Ingodinsky district court in Chita, 5,000 km (3,000 miles) east of Moscow, Khodorkovsky maintained his innocence and accused investigators of manipulating evidence in his case.

"For my own part let me add: they are falsifying the evidence, and all this is encouraged by the court's failure to intervene," he wrote in an appeal posted on July 16 on his Web site, www.khodorkovsky.info.

New charges filed on July 1 accused Khodorkovsky and his imprisoned business associate Platon Lebedev of "theft through embezzlement and the legalisation of the money acquired as a result of a large-scale crime", prosecutors said.

Khodorkovsky's legal team in July said the new charges were a recycled version of a 2006 indictment, with only a few minor changes, and that prosecutors were playing for time as the legal filing date for early release approached.

After Khodorkovsky's arrest in October 2003, the Russian authorities brought his company Yukos to its knees by imposing tens of billions of dollars in back tax claims before selling off its main asset.

The state-controlled oil major Rosneft later bought most of Yukos's assets and became Russia's largest oil company.

Last year a Swiss court halted cooperation with Russia in a criminal case and lifted a freeze on Yukos's funds, saying Russian officials were "being manoeuvred by the powers that be with the intention of reining in the class of rich 'oligarchs' and sidelining potential or declared political adversaries".

Russia's prosecutor general slammed the decision as an unfriendly move.

Khodorkovsky's lawyers welcomed the Swiss decision, and said it was the first time the court had invoked political persecution and human rights violations as grounds for not assisting foreign authorities to pursue a criminal matter. (Additional reporting by Tatiana Ustinova, editing by Robert Hart)