Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s defense has said that it does not anticipate the future amnesty for economic criminals to help the former Yukos boss reports Moscow News.

During a three hour conversation with the Larger Government working group, President Dmitry Medvedev learned that one in every six businessmen in Russia has been prosecuted during the last ten years, which the president called a catastrophe.

The working group has decided that Russian businesses need new instruments of protection, though members of the group did not agree on the best method for altering the mentality of the prosecutor’s office.

Business Russia Vice President Andrei Nazarov suggested that 13,000 businessmen charged with economic crimes should be released from prison, and while Pavel Krasheninnikov of the parliamentary Committee for Legislation supported amnesty, he suggested that economic articles of the Penal Code should be revised to emphasize fines rather than imprisonment for businessmen.

Medvedev added “In any event, we will have to ask the Duma. Amnesties are a prerogative of the parliaments, not presidents.”

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