MOSCOW, January 24 - RAPSI, Sariya Kiut. The Smolensk Military Court has scheduled for April 24 the preliminary hearings in the case against four soldiers charged with looting the Polish presidential plane crash site, according to the court.

Soldiers Sergei Syrov, Igor Pustovarov, Yury Sankov, and Artur Pankratov face charges of stealing as an organized group, causing significant harm to an individual, and attempted grand theft. They face up to six years in prison.

The four soldiers were in charge of cordoning off the site.The men found near the site a bag with a wallet belonging to Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites Secretary Andrzej Przewoznik.

Credit cards containing an equivalent of 379,000 rubles ($12,500) were stolen from the wallet together with their PIN codes. The soldiers managed to cash 59,000 rubles ($1,940) due to the daily withdrawal limit on the credit cards.

A plane carrying former President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and a host of high-level officials crashed near Smolensk on April 10, 2010, killing 96 people. The Polish Tu-154 plane crashed while landing due to the thick fog. The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee issued a final report in late July 2011, placing the blame entirely on the Polish crew. Meanwhile, Poland, which carried out a separate investigation, partially blamed the Russian air traffic controllers for the tragedy.