MOSCOW, December 29 The defense appealed the sentence of former Open Government Minister Mikhail Abyzov, who was sentenced to 12 years in a maximum security colony, the Preobrazhensky Court of Moscow reported.
““The court received an appeal from the defense,” said the agency’s interlocutor.
On December 21, the court sentenced Abyzov to 12 years in a maximum security colony with a fine of 80 million rubles, and also deprived him of the Order of Friendship. Other defendants were given actual sentences ranging from 5 to 12 years in prison with fines ranging from 2 to 80 million rubles.
Yana Balan and Oksana Rozhenkova were released in the courtroom, having been given fines of 4 million rubles each, but they were exempt from paying them taking into account the time they were in custody.
At the same time, the court left Ekaterina Zayats and Oleg Serebrennikov, sentenced to 5.5 and 5 years respectively, under house arrest until the verdict entered into legal force.
Mikhail Abyzov served as the Russian Federation Minister for Coordinating the Activities of the Open Government since May 2012 until May 2018, when the position was abolished. He was detained at the end of March 2019, and since then the ex-minister has been in jail.
Together with Abyzov, 11 defendants were involved in the case: Nikolai Stepanov, Maxim Rusakov, Sergei Ilyichev, Alexander Pelipasov, Galina Fraidenberg, Inna Pikalova, Ekaterina Zayats, Oleg Serebrennikov, Ruslan Vlasov, Oksana Rozhenkova and Yana Balan.
According to the investigation, in 2012-2018, persons involved in the criminal community stole 4 billion rubles from the energy companies Sibeko and RES. Also, according to the investigation, they are involved in illegal business activities generating income in excess of 32.5 billion rubles, commercial bribery and money and asset laundering.
Only the ex-general director of the Ru-com company, Nikolai Stepanov, admitted guilt. In court, he once again emphasized that “this decision was deliberate”; he admits guilt to fraud and commercial bribery (Articles 159 and 204 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The court sentenced him to eight years of imprisonment in a maximum security colony with the minimum fine of all imposed — 2 million rubles.