Smolensk, April 22 - RAPSI. The Smolensk Regional Court has found former Smolensk Mayor Eduard Kachanovsky guilty on bribery charges and sentenced him to four years in reinforced regime colony, RIA Novosti reported.

The jury found the former mayor guilty of large-scale bribery attempt. However, the jury dismissed the charges of bribe extortion and abuse of authority that had been brought against him.  

The court sentenced the former mayor to four years in a reinforced regime colony and fined him 400,000 rubles, taking into account Kachanovsky’s legal guardianship of his elderly mother and four small children. The court also banned him from holding executive positions over the next two years. Kachanovsky can appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court within the next 10 days.

According to the investigation, alongside his deputy mayor and his bodyguard, Kachanovsky extorted a bribe in the form of a three-room apartment worth 2 million rubles from a construction company director for granting permission to commission a residential building.

The former deputy mayor, Valery Osipov, was also involved in the bribery case as a defendant and agreed to cooperate with the investigation in exchange for a suspended sentence.

Kachanovsky took office on March 1, 2009.

He was excluded from the United Russia party one month before his election.