Yevgeny Adamov, 67, has been in custody for almost a year after being arrested in Switzerland at the request of the United States and has been in a Russian prison for the past six and a half months after being extradited to face charges of embezzlement and abuse of office at the start of the year.
At the same time, a representative of the Prosecutor General's Office said it had sent the criminal case into Adamov's alleged offenses to court.
Adamov was bound over to remain in the country. His lawyers are traveling to the pre-trial detention center he is being held in to hand over the Supreme Court's ruling to the prison authorities and secure the former minister's release from custody.
"The court passed the only possible decision," lawyer Genri Reznik told journalists. "I am glad that our citizens can really hope for lawful rulings. The Adamov case is a sequence of injustices on the part of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Moscow City Court. [But] the courts should be genuinely independent."
