A man convicted of stealing oil from his own company got an unexpected surprise when he learned that he had won a presidential pardon along with the four prisoners involved in the U.S. spy swap, his lawyer said Monday.
Dmitry Malin, an oil engineer working in the Saratov region, was among 20 inmates pardoned by President Dmitry Medvedev late Thursday night, the Kremlin said.
He walked free on Friday — the same day that Igor Sutyagin, Sergei Skripal, Alexander Zaporozhsky and Gennady Vasilenko,? the four Russians convicted of spying for the West, were released to the United States in exchange for 10 Russian "deep cover" agents.
Malin, 40, was serving a three-year sentence after being convicted with two accomplices of stealing about 20 tons of crude worth $8,000 from an oil field operated by Saratovneftegaz in 2008, according to the web site of the regional prosecutor's office.
Malin, a first-time convict, was freed under a release order signed by Medvedev together with the pardon, his lawyer, Lyudmila Tomsen, said.
Tomsen said the pardon and the quick release came as a shock. A pardon request was filed a few months ago with the regional pardons commission, which then has to send the request to the local Public Chamber, which in turn forwards cases to the Kremlin, she said. The time lag between the filing with the pardons commission and the document's reception in the Kremlin usually is many months, Tomsen said.
In the meantime, she also filed a request for her client to be granted early parole after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
“If we had known that he was going to be granted a pardon so quickly, we wouldn't have asked for early parole,” Tomsen told The Moscow Times.
Malin's two accomplices remain in prison.
Last week's pardons mark only the second time that Medvedev has exercised his presidential right to pardon prisoners. In 2009, he pardoned 12 inmates, all convicted of minor offenses.
A Kremlin spokesman said Monday that he could not shed light on Medvedev's thinking behind his decision to abruptly pardon the 16 prisoners in addition to the four sought by the United States.
Medvedev's decree said all 20 had sought pardons and admitted their guilt. “All of the inmates have appealed to the head of state to pardon them and have admitted their guilt in committing crimes,” said the decree published on the Kremlin's web site.
Respected columnist Dmitry Sidorov argued in Yezhednevny Journal on Monday that Medvedev also should have pardoned former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and included him in the spy swap in a display of his commitment to democracy.
Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year sentence for tax evasion, is currently being tried on charges of stealing 350 million tons of crude worth $30 billion from his own company. Supporters say the government's case against him is politically motivated and have called on Medvedev to pardon him.
The Kremlin has said it cannot consider a pardon without a confession — and Khodorkovsky has maintained his innocence.
"I'm not a big admirer of the Russian authorities, but giving a pardon to a petty thief is good," Khodorkovsky's lawyer Yury Shmidt said of Malin's release.
Other than the four in the spy swap, the names on the list of pardoned prisoners are obscure. The list also includes two women, Yana Moiseyeva and Oksana Mikhailova.
As for Malin, he is now at home with his preteen child and wife, both of whom are ill and need to be cared for, Tomsen said.
She added that Malin had worked hard to be released from prison. “He has a higher education, wants to find a job, and he has convinced everyone that he will improve himself,” she said.