(Reuters) - Sergei Bobylyov once ran a successful chain of computer shops in Russia called Sunrise. Now, the 43-year-old father of two is serving nine years for fraud in a case his family blames on a corrupt legal system abused by people out to steal his business.

His wife and daughters hope though that a six-month amnesty for jailed entrepreneurs, ordered by President Vladimir Putin and signed into law by parliament last week, will set him free.
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More than 100,000 businessmen, many of whom are innocent, are in prison or face criminal proceedings, according to Boris Titov, hired in 2012 by Putin to protect entrepreneurs' rights.

Under the amnesty, between 3,000 and 10,000 people may be freed, according to official and lobby group estimates.

Critics point out that the amnesty fails to address corruption or tackle flaws in the legal system. Lengthy jail terms are too often handed down in cases that should be settled by civil suits and judges are too easily bought, with some publishing verdicts direct from the prosecutor's charge sheet - including spelling mistakes, they say.

They also say Putin tailored the amnesty to keep political opponents, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky in particular, behind bars.

Calling it "an act of humanity", Putin announced the amnesty to applause from investors at an investor conference in St Petersburg last month, saying it was vital to create a more business-friendly environment in Russia.

The hostile legal environment has made it hard to succeed in business, legitimately, in Russia. A recent poll by the Levada Center, an independent opinion research group, said 38 percent of entrepreneurs want to emigrate.

ROTTEN CORE

At the centre of the problem is a legal system in which the collusion of law enforcement and justice officials is widely available, at a price.

"Someone needs to think about the law, and the system of law enforcement, prosecutors and judges, and change it from the bottom up," said Yana Yakovleva of Business Solidarity, a business rights campaigner.

On top of bureaucracy, criminal prosecution is another all-too-real problem for Russia's businesses. By 2011, one in six businesspeople in Russia had faced criminal charges, according to research by the Moscow-based Center for Legal and Economic Studies. About 120,000 people are serving prison sentences in Russia for economic crimes.

Yakovleva, the head of the business advocacy group, was a co-owner of a chemical company in 2006 when she was thrown in jail. She spent seven months in custody before her case was dropped. She claims the charges were brought by anti-narcotics police after she and her business partner refused to pay kickbacks on sales of an industrial solvent used in drug production.

"It doesn't matter if you abide by all the laws," said Yakovleva. "[Officials] can always pay you a visit and accuse you of any absurd thing, which will then be approved by a court."