MOSCOW, November 15 (RAPSI) – The Moscow City Court on Thursday upheld a sentence issued against a former State Duma lawmaker Ashot Yegiazaryan in absentia in embezzlement case, RAPSI reports from the courtroom.

The court dismissed numerous appeals filed by defense seeking to acquit the defendant or to send the case for retrial.

In May, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court sentenced Yegiazaryan to 7 years in prison for embezzlement. His brother was Artem Yegiazaryan received 5 years in prison in this case, and two other defendants Maxim Kolchin and Vitaly Gogokhia were given 4 years each.

All of them were convicted in absentia as they had left Russia.

Yegiazaryan, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in Russia, was put on the federal wanted list in November 2010 and on the international wanted list in late December 2010. In 2011, the U.S. authorities refused to extradite him.

In 2010, the former MP was charged with embezzling shares of a Moscow mall. In 2012, investigators opened a criminal case on laundering over 700 million rubles ($10.5 million) against him. According to investigation, Yegiazaryan and three accomplices fraudulently purchased 20 percent of Centurion Alliance's shares, valued at 1.57 billion rubles ($23.5 million at the current exchange rate).