ST. PETERSBURG. July 12 (Interfax) - The city court in St. Petersburg heard appeals on Thursday, which were filed by the defense lawyers for businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin) and his ex-defense attorney Dmitry Rafalovich, an Interfax correspondent reported.
The court upheld the ruling earlier passed by a lower district court, and rejected the appeal.
The court found the suspects guilty of extortion. The verdict has taken effect, the Prosecutor General's Office said.
St. Petersburg's Kuibyshevsky Court found businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin) guilty of extorting more than 21 million rubles in March.
The prosecutor demanded that the businessman be sentenced to 18 years in jail and fined 1 million rubles.
Meanwhile, Barsukov is already serving an 18-year term on charges of raiding and he has lost hope to be freed. "I am not asking anything anymore. That term is too long to survive," he said in his final statement.
The businessman, who stands accused of raiding, was also charged with organizing a criminal group, committing large-scale fraud as a member of an organized group, money laundering and organizing a murder, committing murder and attempting murder.
In 2004, Barsukov and members of a criminal group, among them natives of the Tambov region, formed the so-called Tambov criminal group in St. Petersburg. Between July 2005 and June 2006 the businessman and other members of the criminal group committed fraud involving 13 local companies, according to investigators.
One of the fraudulent schemes was related to the Pushkinsky company, which experts valued at over 81 million rubles, and the Smolensky department store, valued at 62 million rubles, according to investigators.
In November 2009, St. Petersburg's Kuibyshevsky Court sentenced Barsukov to 14 years in a high security prison and a fine. The term was later reduced to 11.5 years.