MOSCOW, March 4 (RAPSI) — A court in the city of Omsk has sentenced Andrey Averchenko, a former CEO of OSHA Distillery, to 5.5 years in prison for tax evasion, the press service of Russia’s Investigative Committee informs RAPSI on Thursday.

Investigators and the court established that in 2014 through 2016 the convicted person evaded taxes by concealing the company's proceeds from the sale of not registered alcoholic beverages in the amount of about 53 million liters and reporting deliberately false information about the amount of taxes payable in tax declarations; as a result, the total amount of not paid value added tax and excise duty made more than 1 billion rubles ($13.5 million at the current exchange rate).

The defendant pleaded not guilty, the statement reads.

Averchenko was found guilty of evasion of taxes due from an organization on an especially large scale.