MOSCOW, August 27 (RAPSI) – The Basmanny district court of Moscow has sentenced securities fraud mastermind Oleg Kuznetsov to three years in prison and fined him 200,000 rubles (over $6,000), according to a statement released by Russia’s Federal Service for Financial Markets (FFMS). 

Kuznetsov was convicted of manipulating the price of OAO Finkominvest securities at the MICEX stock exchange and sentenced accordingly. 

The fraud was revealed in March 2010 by the regulator, which shared its suspicions with the law enforcement agencies. The probe into the financial dealings showed that criminals were planning to get on the stock exchange a couple of shell issuers with the expected volume of transactions up to 9 billion rubles (approximately $273 million).

“That’s the first and the only episode on the Russian financial market when a fraudster gets jail time for his activities. I find it a crucial issue – it’s important for our market to stick to an idea that a fraudster or an insider should feel safe. A serious punishment will follow,” PRIME business news agency quoted Dmitry Pankin, Head of FFMS as having said.