Perm court to announce verdict in 250-mln-rbls theft case.

PERM, February 10 (Itar-Tass) - Perm's Lenin district court on
Wednesday will hand down the verdict for money collector Alexander
Shurman, accused of stealing 250 million roubles.

The court will also
announce the verdicts for Dmitry Khudyakov, who the investigators said had
helped ferry the stolen money, Shurman's wife Yelena and father-in-law
Rashid Salimzhanov, who had hidden part of the money.
The reading of the verdicts is open to public, the court's secretariat
told Itar-Tass. The hearings had been held in camera.
At the previous hearing, the prosecutor for the state demanded 9.5
years for Shurman in a maximum-security penitentiary, 9 years for Dmitry
Khudyakov, a 7-year-suspended sentence for Shurman's wife Yelena, and a
2-year suspended sentence for his father-in-law and a 30,000-rouble fine.
The investigators said Alexander Shurman, 36, when transporting money
in a Savings Bank car on June 25, 2009, threatened his two colleagues with
a submachine gun, and forced the driver to head for the forest, where he
ordered his colleagues to give him their mobile phones, locked them in the
money transportation compartment, took the bagfuls of cash into a white
Zhiguli waiting for him and escaped.
Police found Shurman in a dugout in a forest near Perm on June 30. He
did not offer resistance during the arrest and showed the location of the
stolen money.
Almost all the cash was returned to the Savings Bank. However, one
million roubles are still missing. Police suspect the money has been
hidden by Shurman's father-in-law.
Shurman, his wife and Khudyakov were charged with grand robbery
committed by organized group.
His father-in-law is accused of acquiring property by criminal means
and not reporting a particularly serious crime.
During the trial, Shurman, his wife and the driver partly admitted
their guilt. Rashid Salimzhanov pleaded guilty on all counts.


.Russian foreign minister to meet with former US secretary of state.

MOSCOW, February 10 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov will meet on Wednesday with former U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, to discuss the Russian proposals in connection with
the new strategic concept of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Albright arrived in Russia on Tuesday. She leads the NATO Group of
Wise Men, who are working on the fundamental document of the alliance. It
is the first time in NATO history when it is ready to consider, together
with Russia, the issues related to the drawing of the basic military
document.
During the meeting between Lavrov and Albright, the parties intend to
discuss the Russian proposals regarding NATO's new strategic concept. "The
Group of Wise Men will hear the Russian proposals which will be taken into
account when working out the new NATO concept," Russian diplomats said.
The visit will last until February 12. The NATO Group of Wise Men will
meet with leadership of the Russian Security Council, Duma lawmakers,
scientists and experts. Albright will make a speech to students of the
MGIMO State Institute of International Relations.
A NATO representative in Brussels told Tass that experts plan to
exchange opinions with representatives of the Russian leadership and the
Russian scientific community on relations with NATO, and the pressing
issues of present-day security.
The NATO representative said the Group of Wise Men is an independent
expert organization under the Alliance. NATO does not restrict it in its
work on the strategic concept, and they themselves choose whom to meet and
what to discuss. A trip to Russia is not their first foreign visit, but
one of the few in which the group is represented in full, he stressed.
The visit is part of the strategy of NATO Secretary General Fogh
Rasmussen, who made the rebuilding of trust between Russia and NATO a
priority in his work.
Work on the new strategy was launched last April at NATO's
Strasburg-Kehl summit. This document is to set the tasks of the Alliance
for the coming decade and outline the methods of their fulfillment. In
particular, it considers a number of new threats, including possible
crises linked with global warming, supplies of energy resources, cyber
attacks, and sea piracy.
NATO's new Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that the
development of this document should become the "most transparent in NATO
history."
The previous concept was approved in Washington in 1999. It packed the
aggregate experience of NATO gained in the Balkan wars, but by now this
concept has largely become obsolete. However, it envisioned, for the first
time, the possibility to conduct military operations outside the
traditional zone of responsibility of the Alliance.
-0-myz