ST. PETERSBURG, May 7 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) – The Kalininsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced five men to prison terms ranging from 5 to 8 years in prison for weapon smuggling from Europe to Russia, the United press service of St. Petersburg courts told RAPSI Tuesday.

The smuggling ring leader, who was a Federal Penitentiary Service’s employee when committing the crime, Mikhail Svetlov received 8 years behind bars and was fined 350,000 rubles. Ex-police officer Mikhail Moshkin and one more gang member Pavel Peshkov were sentenced to 5.5 years in penal colony and a 20,000-ruble fine each. The gang leader’s brother Leonid Svetlov and his friend Maxim Romanov were given 5 years and 2 months in jail each.

Cases against two other defendants Dmitry Bogdanov and Constantine Dankov, who signed a plea deal with the investigators, were considered separately. They earlier were sentenced to short prison terms.

According to case papers, in 2015, the smuggling ring members bought a great deal of firearms and ammunition in the EU countries and gave them to unidentified persons, who illegally transferred the weapon to Russia for further storage and selling.

Law enforcement officers have seized over 100 weapon units, ammunition, grenades, tritol, hexogen, detonators and detonating fuses.