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MOSCOW, May 11 (RIA Novosti) - A lawyer acquitted last week in the case of murdered American journalist Paul Klebnikov was arrested Thursday on suspicion of fraudulent dealings involving apartments, prosecutors said.
"Moscow prosecutors opened a criminal case on May 6," said Ruslan Zakalyuzhny, acting for Fail Sadretdinov, who was arrested earlier Thursday.
Calling the charges "far-fetched", Zakalyuzhny mentioned that prosecutors had placed Sadretdinov on the wanted list, as they were unable to find him at home.
But Zakalyuzhny said Sadretdinov had appeared in court Wednesday to receive a copy of the verdict and had not tried to hide.
Zakalyuzhny said Sadretdinov was arrested in his notary's office without any explanations, and another lawyer, Ruslan Koblev, said the grounds for the arrest were specious.
Sadretdinov and two other defendants, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, were acquitted of the murder of Paul Klebnikov, former editor of Forbes Russia magazine, by majority jury verdict May 5 at Moscow City court.
Prosecutors in the case claimed Dukuzov, Vakhayev and Sadretdinov gunned down Klebnikov on July 9, 2004, on the orders of Chechen businessman Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, who wanted revenge after Khlebnikov's critical book "Conversations with a Barbarian" featured him as the central figure.
Klebnikov, a United States national, had worked for Forbes since 1989 and gained his reputation for investigating murky post-Soviet business dealings and corruption.
According to the prosecution, Nukhayev recruited a Chechen gang, including Vakhayev and Dukuzov - arrested by Belarusian police in Minsk on November 17 last year - and two other men, named as Magomed Dukuzov and Magomed Edilsultanov. They remain on the federal wanted list.
