Former Moscow district official sentenced to 12 years for extortion.

MOSCOW, July 29 (Itar-Tass) - The Moscow City Court on Thursday
sentenced former deputy head of the Lefortovo district executive council
to 12 years for extorting 5 million roubles of bribes.
Vladimir Matyukhin was charged with five counts of bribe-taking
together with head of the engineering service of the Lefortovo district
Alexander Konstantinov, representative of the Investigative Committee (SK)
department for Moscow Viktoria Tsyuplyonkova told Itar-Tass.
"Investigators found that personal gain motivated the signing of
government contracts with utilities, i.e. they extorted money and received
over five million roubles of bribes from representatives of the commercial
organizations which tended and serviced the territory of the district,"
Tsyuplyonkova said.
The suspects were detained on May 31 as they received 342,000 roubles
from a business person.
In the course of the probe, Alexander Konstantinov signed plea bargain
and on May 25, 2011, a court sentenced him to three years in a maximum
security prison and banned him from taking civil service jobs for 1.5
years.
The case against Vladimir Matyukhin was reviewed by a jury at the
Moscow City Court. On July 26, jurors passed a guilty verdict. The court
also fined Matyukhin 600,000 roubles. Matyukhin will be serving his
sentence in a maximum security penitentiary.
The former official pleaded not guilty and said he would appeal the
verdict at Russia's Supreme Court.