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Prosecutor pressing to sentence Russian real estate tycoon to 8 years behind bars

According to investigators, other suspects in the fraud case include members of the Mirax Group’s board of directors

MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/. The public prosecutor has asked to sentence tycoon Sergey Polonsky to eight years in prison in his real estate fraud case, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom of Moscow’s Presnensky District Court.

"I ask the court to find Polonsky guilty under Part 4 of Section 159 of the Russian Criminal Code, sentence him to eight years in a penal colony and impose a fine of 900,000 rubles ($15,000) on him," the prosecutor stated.

Furthermore, he asked to find other defendants in the case - head of Mirax Group’s Financial Department Alexander Paperno and CEO of Avanta LLC Alexey Pronyakin - guilty of adding and abetting fraud and hand the former a five-year jail term, and the latter a three-year suspended sentence.

The former head of Mirax Group is charged with two counts of embezzlement totaling 2.6 billion rubles ($40 million), the amount which he had pilfered from participants in a shared-equity construction scheme for luxury residential condominiums in western Moscow.

According to investigators, other suspects in the fraud case include members of the Mirax Group’s Board of Directors: Alexey Adikayev, Dmitry Lutsenko and Maxim Temnikov. All three are fugitives who remain on an international wanted list.