Brother of former Moscow mayor’s wife sentenced to 7 years on fraud charges

Moscow’s Gagarinsky court on Friday issued an accumulative sentence to businessman Viktor Baturin, a bother of the former Moscow mayor’s wife, to seven year in general penitentiary on charges of swindling with promissory notes of the company Inteco and property embezzlement in Moscow. It took Judge Oksana Sharova about five years to read out evidence and arguments of the parties. On the strength of all the evidence, Baturin was sentenced to 4.5 years in general penitentiary on swindling charges. She cancelled an earlier suspended sentence verdict of Moscow’s Presnensky district court and added a term of 2.5 years more to his sentence. As of now, Baturin has already spent 20 months in custody. Under the Russian laws, he may be released on parole after serving half of his sentence. Baturin’s lawyer, Igor Shabanov, labeled the verdict as ungrounded and ignoring the defence arguments. “We shall apply to the court of appeals to have this verdict revoked,” he said. Viktor Baturin, a brother of Elena Baturina, the wife of Moscow’s former Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, was arrested on November 30, 2011 on charges of attempting large-scale swindling. Thus, he is accused of two attempted embezzlement of large sums of money under fake promissory notes of his sister’s company Inteco, of an attempted misappropriation of 10.8 million roubles, and of another attempted embezzlement of more than 5.6 billion roubles. On November 28, 2011, he submitted a promissory note to a sum of 10.8 million roubles at Inteco’s Moscow office and demanded an immediate payment. Inteco employees, who doubted the notes’ authenticity, called the police. Baturin has a previous conviction. In June 2011, Moscow’s Presnensky district court issued a suspended sentence of three years behind bars to Baturin on charges of swindling with real estate. Earlier, another criminal case against Baturin, who was suspected of evading taxes to a sum of more than 23 million roubles, was closed because the statute of limitation had expired.