In Abkhazia, Russian citizen sentenced to four years of imprisonment on charge of illegal IP-telephony usage

In Sukhumi, the court has sentenced Sergey Sigov, accused of inflicting harm to an Abkhazian mobile network provider, to four years of imprisonment in a penal settlement-colony. Sentencing of Vladimir Trifonov, who faces the same charge, is postponed.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Russian citizens Vladimir Trifonov and Sergey Sigov are accused of fraud in connection with the fact that they used equipment to transfer phone calls to IP-based networks in order to reduce their costs.

Despite the fact that the criminal cases, which involve them as defendants, are very similar, the young men do not know each other. They came to Abkhazia from different cities and never met each other.

When asked if he wants to come to an agreement with the mobile network provider "A-mobile" and pay them the compensation amounting to 571,000 roubles to persuade them to withdraw their lawsuit, Sergey Sigov has answered in the negative, since he does "not feel guilty."

Meanwhile, he has noted that the Abkhazian laws do not criminalize manipulations in the field of IP-telephony.

According to Valery Tsuzhba, an advocate of Segrey Sigov, his client's guilt has not been proved, and moral damage has not been justified.

The court has included in the sentence the period of the defendant's detention at SIZO (pre-trial prison) from September 5, 2015, till October 18, 2016. Since at the settlement-colony, one year is counted for three, Sergey Sigov will be released on January 5, 2017.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.