NOVOSIBIRSK, December 8 (RIA Novosti) - A court has decided to postpone for another 72 hours ruling on the arrest of a West Siberian city mayor who suffered a heart attack while being investigated for graft.
The administration of Tomsk said the court thereby granted an appeal from prosecutors to extend the deadline for a custody ruling on Mayor Alexander Makarov until the evening of Monday, December 11. Prosecutors said they had failed to collect all the required documents.
The original 48 hours for a decision on the mayor's custody expired at 6:00 p.m. local time (12:00 p.m. GMT) Friday.
The Tomsk administration said 60-year-old Makarov attended the court session, but took ill and was taken away in an ambulance. He is now in the hospital.
Makarov suffered a heart attack Wednesday night as he was meeting with law enforcement officials in the city administration building, the mayor's spokeswoman Nina Schastnaya said.
Local prosecutors said Makarov and his relative were suspected of extorting 3 million rubles ($114,300) from citizens by threatening to destroy their real estate and to prevent them from rebuilding.
"We have also opened a criminal case against the mayor's relative, Nina Yegorenkova," the prosecutor's aide Galina Zhoga said.
The city administration's press service said Makarov was in intensive care in the Tomsk cardiology institute, but that "the crisis has passed."
Igor Shaturny, the first deputy mayor, is replacing the stricken city head, said Makarov's spokeswoman.
The case against the Tomsk mayor, who was first elected in 1996 and has been re-elected three times since, is the latest in a series of corruption probes against officials in Russian provinces.
The new investigation follows a probe into another Siberian regional leader in Khakassia in July, and the arrests of the mayor of Volgograd in southern Russia in June and the governor and deputy governor of the northern Nenets Autonomous Area on embezzlement charges in May.
Some 600 bribery and embezzlement cases have been opened in Russia since July, when Putin, who has set the fight against corruption as a national priority, ordered the new prosecutor general, Yury Chaika, to draw up an anti-corruption strategy.
First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman said in November that annual corruption in Russia had reached $240 billion, a sum almost equal to the federal budget.
