MOSCOW, December 17 - RAPSI. Russian courts sentence more than half of those found guilty of bribes to fines, but many of them are unable to pay and are thus forced to serve prison terms, Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev said in an interview with Kommersant daily on Monday.

A law stipulating the fines for bribery was adopted in 2010. The law set the fine as ranging from 25,000 ($814) to 500,000 rubles ($16,292) for bribery and states that a guilty individual may be deprived of holding specific posts for a term of up to three years. Imprisonment is stipulated as an alternative punishment.

"This year the number of individuals who failed to pay their fines grew by 50% and totalled more than half of all those convicted for bribery," Lebedev said. In 2011, the increase was threefold: 35 percent of those convicted for bribes were sentenced to fines, he said.

Furthermore, the court often has to change the punishment from a fine to imprisonment according to the bailiffs request.

"Indeed, court bailiffs requested the courts to change the sentence of a fine to imprisonment with regard to every second individual convicted for bribery. The courts upheld around one quarter of these requests. Evidently people simply do not have the money to pay the fines," the Supreme Court Chairman said.