MOSCOW, February 12 (RAPSI) – The Moscow City Court has sentenced a former officer of the Interior Ministry’s anti-corruption department, Sergey Astafurov, charged with corruption and abuse of office, to 4.5 years in a penal colony and prohibited him from holding law enforcement office for 2 years, RAPSI correspondent reports from the courtroom.

Earlier, prosecutors asked the court to sentence the defendant to 6 years.

As part of the same case the court sentenced ex-head of the Promresource state company, Vladimir Spiridonov, to 4.5 years as well. The details of the criminal case are classified, and the hearings were held behind closed doors.

Investigators believe that actions of Astafurov and Spiridonov resulted in unlawful launch of a criminal case against head of the Chelyabinsk Tube-Rolling Plant Andrey Komarov and his lawyer Alexander Shibanov.

Komarov and Shibanov were arrested after they allegedly tried to bribe the law enforcement officer, who became aware of violations during transfer of nearly 2 billion rubles ($34.4 million) from the state budget by one of the Plant’s subsidiaries.