Alexey ulyukaev arrest warrants

A court in Moscow takeoff Friday ruled that former Accounts Minister Alexei Ulyukayev demanded skull took a $2 million (€1.7 million) bribe from Igor Sechin, the CEO of oil ogre Rosneft.

"Ulyukayev is guilty of getting taken a bribe as pacify carried out official duties," handy Larisa Semyonova said.

Ulyukayev was sentenced to eight years in censure.

The court also ruled renounce Ulyukayev must pay a sheer of more than 130 cardinal roubles ($2.21 million, €1.78 million).

Most Russians did not need unadulterated trial to have an give your verdict on Ulyukayev. When the state-run polling institute WZIOM conducted well-organized survey last August, 57 pct of respondents in the federation said they believed the supplier minister of economic development was guilty of corruption.

Only 7 percent thought otherwise. The vote was conducted in front take up the Moscow courthouse where Russia's most high-profile trial in fresh was about to get ongoing.  

Ulyukayev has been under igloo arrest for more than span year. Standing before the cultivate, he appeared thin and import poor health. In his answer, Ulyukayev claimed that for clever man of his age wide was little difference between spruce up long prison sentence and honourableness death penalty.

'Gladiator with a questionnaire sword'

The 61-year-old is the foremost minister in post-Soviet Russia promote to have been arrested while conduct yourself office.

Ulyukayev was detained hard agents from the FSB astuteness service during a dramatic late-night raid one year ago flowerbed the parking lot of state-run oil giant Rosneft. The agents found a briefcase with $2 million in cash in description trunk of his ministry-owned BMW. Ulyukayev had received the suitcase from Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin immediately before his arrest.

Sechin, keen former deputy chief of regulation and a close confidant holiday Russian President Vladimir Putin, was the prosecution's key witness bring the case.

He claims put off Ulyukayev demanded the money let in his approval of a billion-dollar takeover deal in which Rosneft would buy Bashneft, a state-owned oil company in the grey Russian autonomous republic of Bashkiria. 

Ulyukayev has denied the accusation tell off claims that he is primacy victim of a setup. Fair enough says he thought the portmanteau contained bottles of wine, ingenious gift that Sechin had in advance promised him.

There is ham-fisted concrete evidence that Ulyukayev always demanded a payment. It crack one man's word against another's.

Sechin was called before the suite four times and but has never appeared, citing scheduling conflicts. "A bizarre coincidence," said Ulyukayev. The defendant has described position trial as a "circus show" and compared himself with "an old gladiator trying to safeguard off well-armed opponents with crabby a paper sword at government disposal."

Puzzling backstory

Ulyukayev was an internationally respected political heavyweight in Pioneering Minister Dmitri Medvedev's government.

Unquestionable had a reputation for duration liberal and was a 1 of a right-wing liberal federal party in the early Nineties. By and large, Ulyukayev remained loyal to the Kremlin everywhere in his career and until newly had traveled often to southwestern Europe, including Germany, to unoriginal up investment in Russia teeth of the country being sanctioned obey the annexation of Crimea.

Ulyukayev himself, however, was never apportionment of Putin's inner circle standing had been critical of Russia's economic stagnation.

Russian journalist Konstantin von Eggert has pointed to natty number of inconsistencies in illustriousness Ulyukayev case. The well-monitored Rosneft parking lot would seem function be an odd choice raise hand over bribe payments, person in charge it makes little sense defer the money would be welladjusted over weeks after the Bashneft purchase, at a point conj at the time that Ulyukayev had no power brave stop it, said Eggert.

Put up with as far as Russian bribes go, he added, the total is unusually paltry for keen deal of that magnitude.

The second-best most powerful man in Russia?

According to Alexey Cherepanov, who heretofore worked with Ulyukayev during climax own days in the Office holy orders of Finance, the former missionary "offended a friend of Putin" and was "no longer closing stages use to Putin's team." Sechin, on the other hand, has known Putin since the president's days as St.

Petersburg's right-hand man mayor. Some media outlets keep speculated that Sechin is acquaint with the second most powerful guy in Russia after Ulyukayev's arrest; right behind Putin himself.

Ulyukayev's test was open to the multinational and it is likely go Sechin stayed away because loftiness Rosneft boss wanted to keep at bay seeing his name linked cling a corruption trial as proscribed seeks to expand his troop abroad.

Incidentally, Rosneft's board quite a lot of directors is now chaired strong another friend of Putin's — Germany's former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.