MOSCOW, April 9 (RAPSI) - The Moscow City Court has upheld the detention of ousted Yaroslavl Mayor Yevgeny Urlashov accused of taking bribes, the court told RAPSI on Wednesday.

The court thus rejected the lawyers' application for a less restrictive preventive measure.  Urlashov will remain in detention until July 3.

According to investigators, Urlashov, who was elected to the mayoral post in April 2012, together with three of his staff extorted a bribe of 45 million rubles ($1.3 million) from the director of a company who had been contracted by the central Russian city for cleaning services.

The police detained Urlashov on July 3. He denied the accusations against him, dismissing the charges as "political games." The Interior Ministry called for the case not to be politicized and insists it is the result of a routine criminal investigation.

Urlashov, a member of the ruling United Russia party in 2008-2011, who later became a candidate for the opposition, achieved a landslide victory in the city's April 2012 mayoral elections over a United Russia candidate. A member of billionaire-turned-politician Mikhail Prokhorov’s Civic Platform party, he planned to head the party’s list at the September 8, 2013 elections to the Yaroslavl regional parliament.

On July 18, Urlashov was removed from his mayoral post.