The prosecutor at the high-profile trial of former Russian Minister for Open Government Affairs Mikhail Abyzov has asked a Moscow court to convict the defendant on corruption charges and sentence him to almost two decades in prison.
The prosecutor asked the Preobrazhensky district court on December 4 to sentence Abyzov to 19 1/2 years, and his four co-defendants, former top managers of the Novosibirsk region's energy supplying companies, to prison terms between seven and 18 1/2 years.
Abyzov was arrested in March 2019 and charged with organization of a criminal group, fraud, illegal entrepreneurship, and commercial tampering.
His co-defendants, Nikolai Stepanov, Maksim Rusakov, Galina Fainberg, and Aleksandr Pelipasov, were arrested at the same time as suspects in the case.
Abyzov was minister for open government affairs from 2012 to 2018 in the cabinet of former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
He is one of several liberal-leaning former government officials in Russia who has been targeted by criminal investigations in recent years.
Abyzov's arrest was seen by some observers in Moscow as part of a crackdown by Russia's security and intelligence services against reformist politicians.
As a minister in Medvedev's cabinet, Abyzov's duties had included trying to make the Russian government more transparent and accountable.
But Russia's Investigative Committee charges that Abyzov was a member of a criminal organization that embezzled 4 billion rubles, or about $44 million, from the Siberian Energy Company and Regional Electric Grid in Novosibirsk.
Investigators allege that Abyzov and his accomplices stole the money and transferred the funds abroad. They also accused Abyzov of founding the criminal enterprise in April 2011, before he became a government minister.
Abyzov has held several executive positions at major Russian energy firms since the mid-1990s, including a role on the board of directors at the electric-power holding company Unified Energy System.