Court convicts ex-Yekaterinburg Deputy Mayor Konteyev to 18 years in prison
KURGAN/MOSCOW. June 11 (Interfax) - The Kurgan Regional Court has sentenced Viktor Konteyev, a former deputy head of the Yekaterinburg city administration accused of involvement in several murders, to 18 years in a high security penitentiary and a fine of 500,000 rubles, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courthouse.
In addition, the other defendants in the case have also been found guilty; the men received from 5 to 18 years in a high security penitentiary and the women 7 years in general security penitentiary each. One of the women was granted a deferment of her conviction until the moment her daughter reaches 14 years.
Konteyev said at the courtroom that he refused to admit his guilt and that all the defendants would appeal the ruling.
The trial of Konteyev and 12 other defendants accused of committing a number of crimes, including serious and especially serious ones, started in August 2013.
According to the case documents, Konteyev, whose duties included the supervision of the consumer market, received a bribe in the form of a stake in Food Base No. 4 valued at over 77 million rubles from its director through a go-between in 2004.
From that moment, Konteyev regularly received a share of the company's revenues, whose assets included the largest food base and its warehouses in Kurgan, a store, and a resort center.
In 2010, Konteyev arranged the extortion from the director of Food Base No. 4 and his daughter of the remaining stake in the enterprise's authorized capital, whose market value was estimated at over 140 million rubles, which, at his demand, was reregistered in the name of his representative.
In 2010-2011, Konteyev also arranged a number of fictitious transactions to legitimize the property he obtained through criminal activities, resulting in his wife Larisa Konteyeva and their relatives becoming the owners of the enterprise.
Konteyev was also accused of arranging the killings of two residents of the Kurgan region in April 2005 and September 2006. These people presumably hindered Konteyev's business by obstructing the transportation of produce through a customs stations in Petukhovo and its delivery to the food base.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax that, apart from Konteyev, the court found 17 of his accomplices guilty of serious and especially serious crimes.
"The court found the evidence collected by the Investigative Committee's investigations department for the Urals Federal District sufficient for convicting [former] Yekaterinburg Deputy Mayor Konteyev and seventeen of his accomplices. Depending of everyone's role, they were found guilty of accepting a bribe, murder, extortion, acquisition of [property] in a criminal way, illegal circulation of weapons, and abduction," Markin said.
