A Siberian court decided on Thursday to extend to November 2 the pre-trial detention for an associate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former head of oil giant Yukos, Russian news agencies reported.
Platon Lebedev has been in pre-trial detention in Chita, 6,500 kilometers (3,700 miles) east of Moscow, accused of embezzling assets, since December 2006, and was due to be released from detention on August 2, the RIA Novosti reported.
Both Lebedev and Khodorkovsky were charged in 2005 for tax fraud, and each received an eight-year sentence, one near the Chinese border, the other in northern Siberia.
Both were transferred to Chita in December 2006 to face the new charges, which carry terms of up to 30 years behind bars.