MOSCOW, February 11 (RIA Novosti) – Seven men, including an ex-police officer, have been convicted of stealing raw gold worth half a million dollars from a Siberian goldmine, Russian investigators said Tuesday.
The former cop, his friend and five accomplices who worked as security guards at the mine stole 40 kilograms of gold concentrate from the Golets Vysochaishy field in the Irkutsk Region and then sold it, according to the local Investigative Committee.
Investigators estimated the worth of the pilfered gold at 17 million rubles ($488,000).
An Irkutsk court sentenced the ex-police officer, Sergei Pankov, and his friend Nikolai Zelentsov to five and a half years and four and a half years respectively in prison.
Investigators said in the statement that the other five men were given suspended sentences.
