Former RBF president sentenced to 4.5 years' imprisonment
MOSCOW. Oct 23 (Interfax) - Moscow's Chertanovsky District Court has sentenced Yulia Anikeyeva, former president of the Russian Basketball Federation (RBF), to four years and six months in a general-security penal colony in the case of embezzlement of the RBF's funds, an Interfax correspondent reported.
"[The court ruled] to find Anikeyeva guilty of committing a crime under the Part 4 of the Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code (massive embezzlement) and sentence her to imprisonment for four years and six months," Judge Yulia Chernikova said, reading a ruling on Monday.
The court, in a separate ruling, closed the proceedings against another defendant of the crime, former RBF accountant Mikhail Kocharyan, due to his death.
The court found that Anikeyeva, together with her accomplices, "acting deliberately," embezzled about 44 million rubles as part of a group of persons in collusion using entrepreneurs controlled by her and her accomplices in the period from February 2014 to August 2015.
Anikeyeva and her lawyers were absent from the sentencing. Defender David Hechyan told Interfax that the former RBF head had not appeared in court because she does not believe in a possibility of a fair sentence.