23:00, 15 February 2010

Hadjikurbanov, former figurant in Politkovskaya's case, sentenced to 8 years for extortion

Today, the Taganka Court of Moscow has found Sergey Hadjikurbanov, earlier acquitted on Anna Politkovskaya's murder case, guilty of extorting 350,000 US dollars and sentenced him to eight years of imprisonment.

The second figurant of this case - Chervone Ogly - was sentenced to seven years of maximum security colony.

The Prosecutor's Office had asked to sentence Hadjikurbanov to ten years of imprisonment, and Chervone Ogly - to nine years.

"The court has established that Hadjikurbanov and Ogly had committed their extortion by previous concert, having devised a plan of the crime and distributed the roles," the "Interfax" quotes the verdict, which was announced by the judge.

Under the version of the prosecution, Sergey Hadjikurbanov, a former operative agent of the UBOP (Department Against Organized Crime), after serving by September 2006 his two-year term for excess of official duties, started to extort, together with Chervone Ogly, a native of Chechnya, 350,000 US dollars under "a far-fetched pretext" from his former colleague Dmitri Pavlyuchenkov.