A former YUKOS security chief Alexei Pichugin was sentenced Wednesday for 20 years for dual murder.
Alexei Pichugin, a senior official for then biggest oil company in Russia, was found guilty by eight of the twelve jurors in the murder of two employees of Menatep Group.

Mr. Pichugin was arrested in 2003 and now according to the court’s decision will serve the sentence from the time he was imprisoned.

He was accused of organising contract killing of Olga Kostina and Sergei Gorin, two employees of Menatep Group that owns a major stake at YUKOS and was headed at the time by Platon Lebedev who faces a 10-year imprisonment, as well as YUKOS ex-chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Dmitry Shokhin, Russia’s chief prosecutor who is seeking the largest sentence for Khodorkovsky and Lebedev that amounts to 10 years each, said the sentence would be just as Khodorkovsky and Lebedev committed illegal acts. "The guilt of the defendants is fully proven," he added.

The sentence request was expected by the Khodorkovsky defense team, said Genrikh Padva, Khodorkovsky’s lead defense attorney.

YUKOS lost its major oil-pumping unit Yuganskneftegaz about six months ago to the Russian oil company Rosneft. Yuganskneftegaz will sue its former parent company with the demand for YUKOS to pay for oil supplied from July to December, for which, as Yuganskneftegaz claims, Yukos never paid. The suit was filed about two weeks ago. The case is expected to be heard in the court on April 25.