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US citizen sentenced to 4 years in prison for bribing assistant of ex-Russian Deputy PM

Eugene Spector had previously fully admitted his guilt

MOSCOW, June 17. /TASS/. The Ostankinsky court in Moscow has sentenced a US citizen of Russian origin, Eugene (Gene) Spector, to four years in prison as part of a bribery case against former assistant to ex-Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Arkady Dvorkovich, the court’s press service told TASS.

"Gene Mironovich Spector was found guilty under Part 4 of Art. 291.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (mediation in bribery on an especially large scale). He had previously fully admitted his guilt, and his case was singled out in a separate proceeding. The court sentenced him to four years in a maximum-security facility," the court official said.

Spector was born and raised in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg), but later moved to the United States and received American citizenship. Until recently, he served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Medpolymerprom Group. Spector invented and patented in Russia a cure for cancer - a humanized monoclonal antibody (MAb) specific to syndecan-1. He is accused of mediating bribes for Anastasia Alekseeva, a former assistant to the Russian Deputy Prime Minister.

According to the investigation, in 2015-2016, Alekseeva received bribes from Maxim Yakushkin, who was General Director of Promomed Rus LLC in 2014-2017. The bribes amounted to more than 4 million rubles ($55,408) and were given in the form of vacation trips to Thailand and the Dominican Republic. In both cases, the tickets and vouchers cost 2 mln rubles ($27,706) each. During this period, Alekseeva was an assistant to Arkady Dvorkovich, who served as Deputy Prime Minister.

Earlier, Moscow’s Basmanny Court ruled to detain Alexeeva and Spector. Other defendants in the case are: Maxim Yakushkin and Vadim Belonozhko, Advisor to the General Director of R-Pharm JSC.

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