MOSCOW, September 4 (RAPSI) - The Moscow City Court will consider on September 12 an appeal filed by Alexander Lebedev's lawyers against a 150-hour correctional labor sentence handed down after the banker punched businessman Sergei Polonsky during the filming of an NTV talk show, RAPSI reported from the courtroom on Wednesday.

The court postponed the hearing because Lebedev's attorney Genri Reznik, who is on vacation, did not appear in the court.

The initial charges against Lebedev were made last September, more than a year after he punched Polonsky. The scuffle ensued after Polonsky accused Lebedev of spreading a rumor about a crack in the Moscow City skyscraper that his firm was building.

Lebedev has been accused of hooliganism and battery. He has not admitted his guilt and said the charges are unsubstantiated. Lebedev said he punched Polonsky during the filming of an NTV talk show to neutralize the latter's aggression.

On June 28, Polonsky appealed to the court to forgive Lebedev for punching him, according to a statement on his Facebook account.

Lebedev, 53, is the co-owner of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and the owner of The Independent. He supported a program to raise funds for opposition leader Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption project RosPil and has also made repeated claims about a persecution campaign against his businesses by the Russian government, a charge the authorities deny.

Polonsky, once one of Russia's wealthiest men, was charged in absentia in Juky as part of a criminal case involving the embezzlement of over 5.7 billion rubles ($176.2 million) from the participants in an up market cooperative residential construction project in Moscow. The development project has come to be known as the Kutuzovskaya Miliya case.

Russia isn't the only place where Polonsky has recently found himself in a bit of hot water. Polonsky was arrested with two Russian friends in Cambodia in December 2012 for allegedly attacking the six-person crew of a boat. The businessman was released in April, but ordered not to leave the country. In June a British tabloid newspaper reported that he was at a luxury apartment in Israel. Polonsky's lawyer Diana Tatosova said that the Cambodian authorities had allowed Polonsky to travel to Israel for medical treatment. In August, Polonsky returned to his island in Cambodia.