MOSCOW, May 5 - RAPSI. Shadow political consultants have been sentenced to five years in prison for trading MP seats in the State Duma, the newspaper Izvestia reported on Saturday.

Former employees of the Quorum parliamentary newspaper, Vladislav Kalinin and Pavel Popov, were found guilty of trading MP seats in the lower house for 10 million euros.

Both continue to claim their activities were legal and that they were framed by special services.

Popov's defense attorney Vladimir Koshelev said he was "shocked" by the sentence given that the prosecutors allegedly failed to produce any credible evidence of their guilt. The defense will appeal the judgment.

Kalinin and Popov promised to consult their clients on various matters and to arrange a wide PR campaign in the media to support MP candidates.

The consultants charged their clients 100,000 euros for the first stage of a PR campaign excluding their fees and advertising costs. They also boasted of having close relations with well known MPs.

Kalinin and Popov were charged with attempted fraud.

In 2011 law enforcement agencies investigated a similar case against two MP assistants in the Just Russia party. They sold MP seats for 7.5 million euros, investigators claimed.

Parliamentary elections were held last December. Public protests against alleged fraud took place across Russia afterwards. The protesters demanded that the election results, in which United Russia gained almost half the vote, be nullified and that Central Election Commission Head Vladimir Churov be fired.