The Moscow City Court did not reduce the term of imprisonment for Ulyukaev

The Moscow City Court excluded the ban on holding public office from the verdict against former Minister of Economic Development Alexey Ulyukaev, a reports Mediazona correspondent from the courtroom. The rest of the sentence was left unchanged.

On December 15, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court found the ex-minister guilty under Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code (taking a bribe) and sentenced him to eight years in a maximum security colony. During the appeal hearing of the case, the prosecutor's office asked to uphold the verdict; the defense insisted that Ulyukaev should be acquitted due to the lack of corpus delicti in his actions.

Also at the closed meeting, the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, was interrogated. During the hearing of the case in the first instance, he did not come to court for questioning as a witness.

Alexey Ulyukaev was detained in November 2016 after he came to Rosneft to talk with Sechin. According to investigators, Ulyukaev demanded $2 million from the head of Rosneft for a positive conclusion on the Bashneft privatization deal.

The BBC Russian Service published the contents of Sechin’s interrogation protocol. "Ulyukaev A.V. with a gesture in the form of two fingers, he showed the amount of the remuneration he required, specifying verbally that this gesture corresponds to 2 million US dollars. About the said proposal of Ulyukaev A.V. I promised to think about it,” one of the documents said.