MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI) – The Ryazan Regional Court has upheld a lower court’s ruling to grant parole for Sergey Fedotov, former Director General of the Russian Authors’ Society (RAO), who had been sentenced for 1.5 years in prison for large scale fraud, the court’s press office told RAPSI on Thursday.

Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court convicted and sentenced Fedotov, who had pleaded guilty, in June. The convict was to serve 6 months in prison because the time he had spent in detention was included in the length of the punishment.

As previously reported, employees of the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) have revealed fraud scheme over illegal alienation of RAO’s property. Damage caused to the RAO’s property has been estimated at 500 million rubles (about $8.5 million at the current exchange rate).

However, Fedotov’s defense team insisted that the damage amount reached about 297 million rubles ($5 million). His lawyer Denis Baluyev also claimed that his client was a victim of calumniation.

The Russian Authors’ Society is a non-governmental organization created in 1993 for collective management of author’s rights. At this moment over 25,000 people are listed as its members.