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Ex-economy minister’s 8-year prison verdict goes into effect

The former minister was sentenced to eight years in a maximum security correctional facility and a 130-mln ruble ($2.2 mln) fine for taking a bribe

Former Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev Mikhail Pochuyev/TASS

Former Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev

© Mikhail Pochuyev/TASS

MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. The guilty verdict to former Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev has come into force, a TASS correspondent reported from the hall of the Moscow city court.

The former minister was sentenced to eight years in a maximum security correctional facility and a 130-mln ruble ($2.2 mln) fine for taking a bribe.

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Rosneft CEO to testify in court in ex-economy minister case

The Appeals Board removed the restriction on holding public office for eight years after leaving the colony from the former minister.

The defense of the former minister will appeal against the verdict of the Moscow City Court.

"Of course, we appeal against this decision in the cassation," Daredzhan Kveidze, Ulyukaev's lawyer, told TASS.

Earlier on Thursday, the former minister’s lawyers asked the court to acquit him or change the punishment for conditional.

On December 15, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court sentenced Ulyukayev to eight years in a maximum security correctional facility and a 130-mln ruble ($2.2 mln) fine for taking a bribe. He was also banned from serving as a state official for eight years after he will have served out his sentence, but he was not stripped of state awards.

Ulyukayev, who remained under house arrest during the investigation, was taken into custody in the courtroom and is being held in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center.

Ulyukayev was Russia’s first federal minister to have been detained while in office.

In November 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed Ulyukayev from his high-ranking post citing loss of trust.

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