MINSK. March 11 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian citizen Vladlena Bruskova, who was sentenced by a Belarusian court to one year in jail for collecting commercial information and using forged documents, is to be freed from prison on March 12, the woman's lawyer Dmitry Goryachko told Interfax on Wednesday.
"My client's prison term expires on March 12. I visited her in the penal colony yesterday. Bruskova is getting ready for her release," Goryachko said.
According to the lawyer, he has recently visited imprisoned U.S. citizen Emmanuel Zeltser, who was found guilty of industrial espionage along with Bruskova. "He is still being held in the prison's hospital. His health has not improved," he said.
In August 2008, the Minsk City Court convicted New York-based lawyer Zeltser of industrial espionage and the use of fake documents and sentenced him to three years in prison. Bruskova was jailed for one year.
Zeltser and Bruskova, who was the U.S. citizen's secretary, were arrested in Minsk on March 12, 2008.
Zeltser is a former Soviet emigre and a specialist in organized crime and money laundering in Russia and other Soviet republics. His name was mentioned during an investigation into claims of money laundering through the Bank of New York. Some media companies presume that the U.S. lawyer's arrest is linked to a dispute over assets once owned by businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili, who recently died in London.