3 Aug 2022 18:26

Moscow City Court sentences Duma deputy Belousov to 10 years' imprisonment for bribery

MOSCOW. Aug 3 (Interfax) - The Moscow City Court ruled on Wednesday to find Vadim Belousov, Russian State Duma deputy, guilty of accepting a bribe of over 3-billion-rubles and sentenced him to ten years in a high-security penitentiary, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courthouse.

"Belousov shall be sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, serving his term in a high-security penitentiary," Judge Andrei Gurov said in handing down the judgment.

The court also ordered that Belousov be fined 500 million rubles and be barred from occupying positions involving the performance of functions as a representative of authority and exercising organizational-distributive, and administrative-economic duties in civil service for three years.

The court also deprived Belousov of a state award, i.e. a medal of the order For Merits to the Fatherland, 2nd class.

The court replaced the pretrial restrictive measure of travel restrictions imposed earlier on Belousov by his arrest pending the sentence's entry into legal effect. However, Belousov was not actually arrested in the courtroom, as he was not present there while the judgment was being pronounced. His defense explained his absence due to his being busy.

Another defendant in the same case, Margarita Butakova, former chief accountant of the Pervyi Khlemokombinat (First Bakery Complex) based in Chelyabinsk and reportedly Belousov's mother-in-law, was found guilty of accepting a massive bribe and received a suspended sentence of five years' imprisonment, with a probation period of four years, plus a 500-million-ruble fine. In handing down this sentence, the court took into consideration her age (80 years), mental state, and chronic illnesses.