The payment of a fine of 130 million rubles by former Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev is an "active admission of guilt." This was stated to RNS by Rosneft press secretary Mikhail Leontyev. "The fact that he complied with the court decision in this part, and complied with it in full and, one might say, ahead of schedule, indicates that this is an active admission of guilt, and that is the only way we view it. We believe that it is good when a guilty person admits his guilt," Leontyev said.

Rosneft is not involved in Ulyukaev's fate, since this is the task of the legal system, he added. " In this case, our director was the complainant in the case, because he fulfilled his civic duty. We do not take on any functions - neither investigative, nor punitive, nothing: we extract oil, you know. We process, extract, sell. We solve problems that arise in the retail fuel market, and so on. This is our task, and deciding the fate of anyone, including former Minister Ulyukaev, is not within our competence," Leontyev concluded.

On Friday , Interfax reported, citing a source, that Ulyukaev had paid the 130 million ruble fine imposed on him by the court. In connection with this, the defense has already filed a motion with the court to lift the interim measures from the ex-minister's seized property.

In December last year, Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky Court found Ulyukaev guilty of accepting a $2 million bribe from Rosneft executive director Igor Sechin. The former minister was sentenced to eight years in a maximum security penal colony. Ulyukaev was also fined, and until the fine was paid, the court seized his land plots, private home, car, house, precious metal coins seized during searches, wristwatches, and other property.

this week Ulyukaev was transferred to the place where he will serve his sentence, said Eva Merkacheva, deputy chairperson of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission. According to her, the ex-minister was taken to a region located near Moscow, and the transfer took no more than four hours.

Sergey Porter, Evgeny Razumny / Vedomosti

Rosneft called Ulyukaevs' payment of fine "an active admission of guilt"