MOSCOW, May 22 (RAPSI) – A court in Nizhny Novgorod has arrested ex-regional government executive Oleg Kondrashov in absentia as part of a 17-million-ruble (about $280,000) bribery case, the spokesperson of the united press office of regional courts Valery Lazarev has told RAPSI.

Earlier, the court detained three other defendants in the case, former Kondrashov’s deputy Vladimir Privalov and two businessmen Sergey Muravlev and Yury Grishin.

According to investigation, from 2012 to 2013, Kondrashov and Privalov received 17 million rubles in total from a businessman personally and through third parties for the officials’ assistance in funeral business and allocation of a land plot for the construction of crematorium.