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Notary acquitted of Klebnikov murder given 9 years for fraud

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MOSCOW, January 31 (RIA Novosti) - A Moscow Court Wednesday sentenced a notary previously acquitted in the murder case of Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov to nine years in prison for property fraud and professional misconduct.

Fail Sadretdinov was found guilty of fraudulently registering an apartment deal in 2002. Investigators said Sadretdinov used a forged will to take possession of an apartment in Moscow.

Sadretdinov denied any wrongdoing and said he was incriminated on fabricated evidence. He said he intends to contest the verdict within 10 days.

"We expected a verdict like this. All this is a hideous fabrication," defense attorney Ruslan Kolev said.

On May 5, 2006, a jury cleared Sadretdinov along with two other defendants - Chechens Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev - of Klebnikov's 2004 killing, but the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal in November and ordered repeat hearings for February 15 of this year.

Klebnikov had worked for Forbes since 1989 and gained a reputation for investigating murky post-Soviet business dealings and corruption. He became the first editor of Forbes Russia when it was launched in April 2004. He was shot dead on a Moscow street three months into the job.

After the Supreme Court quashed the non-guilty verdicts, Sadretdinov made an unsuccessful suicide attempt in December.

Koblev said at the time that his client, driven "by despair and violations of his rights in the court system," had tried to hang himself in a cell of the Butyrsky detention center, where he had been held for more than a year, but that fellow inmates prevented him from doing so.

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