Court arrests Yaroslavl Mayor Urlashov on bribery charges
YAROSLAVL. July 5 (Interfax) - The Yaroslavl Leninsky District Court arrested Yaroslavl Mayor Yevgeny Urlashov on charges of bribery on Friday.
Judge Lyudmila Kolygina said he would stay under arrest until September 2.
"The court order will be appealed," Mikhail Pisarets, one of Urlashov's lawyers, told Interfax.
Urlashov said he was not surprised. "This case is politically motivated," he said.
Vice-Mayor Dmitry Donskov will stay under arrest until September 3 on court orders, lawyer Valery Chistov told Interfax.
"We deem this decision unfair and will file an appeal within three days," Chistov said.
Earlier the court arrested Andrei Zakharov, a suspect in the Yaroslavl City Hall corruption case.
His lawyer Alexander Zakharyin told Interfax he would stay in custody until September 3.
The court also ordered the arrest of the Yaroslavl mayor's advisor, Alexei Lopatin, until September 3.
Lopatin's defense attorneys have announced they will file an appeal.
The fifth suspect in the Urlashov case , director of the Agency for Municipal Orders Maxim Poikalainen, has also been arrested until September 3.
The court disregarded the fact that Poikalainen has two young children and no criminal record.
Urlashov was detained on July 3, one day after the announcement that he would top the list of the Civil Platform in the elections to local legislature.
The official website of Yaroslavl city authorities reports that on Tuesday the mayor met representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) who discussed the political situation in the city and region with him behind closed doors.
Urlashov, his deputy Dmitry Donskov, his advisor Alexei Lopatin and senior mayoral official Maxim Poikalainen were put behind bars on suspicion of attempted conspiracy-based bribe extortion.
Investigators claim that, between December 2012 and July 2, 2013, Urlashov and the three others demanded that the chief executive of a company share with them a sum paid to his firm under a contract.
They threatened that the company would not be paid what it was due under another contract if he did not hand over the 14 million rubles they allegedly demanded, it is claimed.
Markin had told Interfax earlier that some of the suspects provided testimony implicating the mayor, and that one of the suspects accepted a plea bargain proposal. He also said that the investigators would seek Urlashov's arrest.
Lawyer Sergei Golubenkov said Urlashov had started to provide testimony. Another lawyer, Mikhail Pisarets, earlier said that Urlashov had not pled guilty and refused a plea bargain proposal.
The Interior Ministry press center reported earlier that $500,000 was found at the Yaroslavl mayor's residence. The mayor's daughter had tried to hide the money. The police said the daughter learned about the detention of her father early in the morning on July 3 and asked neighbors to keep the money at their apartment. The police became aware of her intentions and seized the money." The neighbor later admitted that 20 million rubles had already been stashed in his apartment," the Interior Ministry reported.
The search of the residence of Urlashov's press secretary, Svetlana Yefimova, yielded $200,000. The origin of this money is now being established, the Interior Ministry said.
