MOSCOW. Feb 8 (Interfax) - The state prosecutor has asked the court to sentence Sergei Furgal, a former governor of Russia's Khabarovsk Territory found guilty by a jury of murders, to 23 years in a high-security penal colony, a spokesperson for the Moscow Region Court told Interfax on Wednesday.
"The state prosecutor asked the court to conclusively sentence Sergei Furgal to 23 years in a high-security correctional facility," the spokesperson said.
The state prosecutor requested terms of 10.5 years, 17 years and 22 years in a high-security penitentiary to three other defendants in this case - Marat Kadyrov, Andrei Palei and Andrei Karepov.
Earlier, a panel of jurors delivered a guilty verdict against all four defendants in the case.
According to the verdict pronounced at a hearing held by the Moscow region's Lyubertsy Court in the Moscow Regional Court on February 1, the jurors found that it had been proven that Furgal was guilty of two murders, one attempted murder and illegal arms trafficking.
Furgal does not deserve leniency with regard to any of the murder counts, the verdict said.
However, Furgal is not facing life imprisonment. The ex-governor was found guilty of serious crimes which carry this penalty but on which the 15-year statute of limitations had by then elapsed. Under the Criminal Code, should the court find it impossible to exonerate Furgal of responsibility for those crimes, life imprisonment may not apply to him.
The jurors also found Karepov, Kadyrov and Palei guilty of all charges, but decided that Kadyrov deserved leniency as regards the attempted murder.
According to investigators, the former governor of the Khabarovsk Territory in the Russian Far East organized an attempt to kill businessman Alexander Smolsky and the murders of businessmen Yevgeny Zorya and Oleg Bulatov in 2004-2005.
The decision to kill Smolsky and Zorya was due to a business conflict, and Bulatov was murdered because he was suspecting Furgal's involvement in Zorya's murder, the investigators said.
Furgal was the instigator of the crimes, they said, with Karepov acting as the organizer of the crimes and Kadyrov and Paley as killers.
Furgal was detained in Khabarovsk in the early hours of July 9, 2020 and was taken to Moscow. He is now in the Lefortovo detention center.
A criminal case involving a criminal community and large-scale fraud was opened against Furgal in 2021.
Furgal denied all the charges brought against him.
His detention caused a public outcry in the Khabarovsk Territory at the time.