Svetlana Petrovna Bakhmina (, born 13 October 1969 in Moscow) was a middle-ranking legal executive for Yukos, the Russian oil company who was arrested and tried on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement. On April 21, 2009 she was released from jail. Arrest and trial Svetlana Bakhima was arrested on 8 December 2004 and tried on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement. On 19 April 2006 she was sentenced to two years imprisonment for tax evasion and six and a half years imprisonment for embezzlement, which the Simonovsky district court combined into a seven-year prison term in a high-security penal colony. Failed appeal Svetlana Bakhmina, then 36, was the mother of two little boys, 2 and 6 years of age. She was not permitted to see her children even once in the sixteen months from the time of her arrest to the passing down of the sentence of imprisonment. In 2005 she went on hunger strike after her custodians in the pre-trial detention centre refused to allow her to make paid telephone calls to her sons. Following an appeal, the conviction for tax evasion was overturned in the Moscow City Court on 24 August 2006, and her sentence was accordingly reduced to six and a half years. At the same hearing, Svetlana Bakhmina was given leave to appeal for a postponement of the prison term because she had small children. Consequently, on 19 September 2006 Svetlana Bakhmina appealed to the court for a deferral of her sentence for nine years (under Russian law, a person whose sentence is deferred in such a way can be allowed temporary liberty). The decision of the court was to refuse her appeal. On 27 May 2008 Bakhmina appealed to the Zubovo-Polyansky court of Mordovia for an early conditional discharge. The appeal was refused. On 10 September 2008 Bakhmina once again appealed to the Zubovo-Polyansky court of Mordovia for an early conditional discharge, as she had served half of her term. The appeal was refused despite the fact that Bakhmina was in her seventh month of pregnancy. Release On November 28, 2008 Bakhmina gave birth to a girl. There was no response to Bakhmina's appeal for clemency. On April 21, 2009 she was released from jail. Reactions Commentators claimed that Svetlana Bakhmina was not guilty of any offence, but she was in effect a political prisoner due to political vendetta by the authorities against Yukos