© Alexander Vilf / SputnikFormer Yaroslavl Mayor Yevgeny Urlashov (right), charged with accepting a bribe, at a haring in the Basmanny District Court which considers extending his detention.
A district court in the central Russian city of Yaroslavl has sentenced former mayor Evgeny Urlashov to 12.5 years in prison for extorting a multimillion-ruble bribe from a street cleaning company.
The court also sentenced Urlashov's former aide, Aleksey Lopatin, to seven years, but fully acquitted the former mayor's deputy, Dmitry Donskov, who had also faced charges within the same case.
The court also ordered the former mayor to pay a fine of 60 million rubles (about US$900,000 at current rates).
Urlashov's case dates back to July 2013, when he was detained and charged with attempted large-scale bribery. Four more people - local civil servants and managers of municipal companies - were implicated in the case. Urlashov had worked as Yaroslavl mayor for about a year before his detention.
According to investigators, a group of Yaroslavl city officials headed by Urlashov attempted to extort a bribe from a local businessman who was working on a city contract. The mayor and his aides reportedly wanted a kickback of 45 million rubles (over $1.2 million at that time) from the cleaning company, threatening not to accept the work and delay payment if their demands were not met.
Comment: Intensity of intent: Cavusoglu dangled incentives to Pakistan's Sartaj Aziz to shut down the Gulen school network by offering a free trade agreement promise, reminders of Turkish cooperation in the past regarding Kashmir, a deepening of bilateral relations, more high level exchanges, an intensified cooperative fight against terrorism, and an upgraded economic partnership. While Aziz may have been agreeable to all of the above, he cautiously only committed to investigate.