The Golovinsky Court thereby upheld a suit filed by Aeroflot against former Aeroflot Deputy Director General Nikolai Glushkov, former chief accountant Lidia Kryzhevskaya, and former head of affiliated company Financial United Corporation Roman Sheinin, all of whom were found guilty of embezzling Aeroflot funds worth 214.9 million rubles ($8 million).
Kryzhevskaya and Sheinin said after the trial that they intend to appeal the decision after studying its text and consulting their lawyers. Glushkov was absent from the hearings.
"Glushkov has left Russia, it is a well-known fact, so we can consider the case in his absence," an Aeroflot representative said in the courtroom.
But the defendants insisted on adjourning the process until Glushkov appears in court. "Aeroflot can find Glushkov, as the company has a wide network of offices throughout the world," Kryzhevskaya said.
Defense attorneys urged the court to reject Aeroflot's suit.
"We oppose the claim," said Vladimir Sobolev, who represents Kryzhevskaya's interests. He said he is surprised that the suit based on the case, which both prosecutors and judges have been looking into since 1999, was upheld so quickly.
On July 3, Moscow's Savyolovsky Court handed down two-year suspended sentences for two defendants and closed Glushkov's criminal case under the statute of limitations.
The Prosecutor General's Office said Glushkov and other defendants had convinced former Aeroflot Director General Yevgeny Shaposhnikov to transfer the airline's currency earnings to a foreign account. As a result, $252.4 million were transferred from Aeroflot's 77 branches from May 1996 to November 1997, and part of the sum was embezzled.
The judge said the defendants pleaded not guilty, adding that the court took into account mitigating circumstances. She said they suffered from chronic illnesses and were elderly.
Prosecutors had demanded prison terms of five, four and a half and four years for Glushkov, Kryzhevskaya and Sheinin, respectively.
In March 2004, Glushkov and Alexander Krasnenker, a former Aeroflot deputy director general, were sentenced to three years and three months and two and a half years in jail. Glushkov was released in the courtroom because he had served his time while in pre-trial detention, and Krasnenker died in 2005.
However, the Moscow City Court overturned the sentence and sent the case for retrial.
