MOSCOW, May 7 (RAPSI) - Yevgenia Vasilyeva, an aide to former defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov, has been acquitted of some of the charges brought against her, RAPSI reported from Moscow's Presnensky District Court where the reading of the sentence began on Wednesday. 

Vasilyeva has been indicted on 8 criminal counts of 12, which indicates certain weakness of the case brought against her, according to experts.

Vasilyeva faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison on each count.

She was initially accused of fraud, money laundering, and exceeding and abusing her authority while serving as the director of Oboronservis holding that comprises companies involved in armament and military vehicle repair and maintenance, construction materials and food production, power facility management, cartography and printing goods production, and housing services for military towns.

In 2012, the Defense Ministry’s Department of Property Relations and Oboronservis became involved in a corruption scandal that led to the resignation of Serdyukov and Vasilyeva.

The court found that there were violations in property transactions and that the commission for mediators was unlawfully high. The recognized damages to the state were reduced six times, from 3 billion ($59.6 mn) to 550 million rubles ($10.9 mn).

Judge Tatyana Vasyuchenko pointed out that Vasilyeva and four other defendants had evidently committed the crimes as an organized group. They also used their positions to deceive the then minister of defense Anatoly Serdyukov.

Vasilyeva’s lawyers claimed once again during the hearing that she was innocent and that the state incurred no damages.