Former Russian Parliamentarian Sentenced In Tatarstan

23 August 2005 (RFE/RL) -- A court in Russia's republic of Tatarstan today sentenced a former State Duma deputy to 7 1/2 years in jail on charges of fraud and embezzlement.
The court also sentenced Sergei Shashurin to pay Tatarstan's Tatneft oil company $31,500 and awarded another five unidentified individual plaintiffs a total of $10,000 in damages.

Earlier this year, a Moscow court sentenced Shashurin to 20 months in jail for libel.

Shashurin won fame five years ago when he publicly accused Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of being involved in financial misdeeds in Tatarstan.

Shashurin served in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, from 2000 through 2003. He was a member of the Duma's anticorruption committee.

(ITAR-TASS/RIA-Novosti)