MOSCOW, October 27 - RAPSI. The court has commuted the punishment for a former Kuban bank employee sentenced to six years in prison for stealing $41 million from the Pension Fund, the court told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) on Thursday.

Alexander Brazhnikov received six years, while the sentences of the other four convicts in the case remained unchanged.

A Moscow district court declared former police officer Yuri Shcherbakov guilty of masterminding the theft on August 4 and sentenced him to 6.5 years in a high security prison.

The other five defendants in the case, who like Shcherbakov admitted to their crime, received from three to six years in a standard security prison.

The Investigative Committee reported earlier that on November 13, 2009 an unidentified individual produced documents at a bank ostensibly for "financing capital investments in, and project designs for, Pension Fund construction projects."

The money was remitted to a company called SpetsTekhProm to its Kuban bank account.

According to investigators, three days later, a total of 1.25 billion rubles was transferred via six transactions under sham contracts to other banks for companies with accounts in Cyprus.