Moscow (AFP)

The Russian prosecution demanded six years in prison on Monday against the director and director Kirill Serebrennikov, a figure in the Russian artistic community accused of embezzlement in a controversial case.

During a hearing in Moscow, the prosecution also demanded a fine of 800,000 rubles (10,200 euros at the current rate), according to an AFP journalist present in court.

Sentences ranging from 4 to 5 years in prison were also required against three of Mr. Serebrennikov's collaborators.

Present at the hearing, Kirill Serebrennikov, 50, is accused of having embezzled between 2011 and 2014 about 128 million rubles (1.64 million euros at the current rate) of public subsidies.

Arrested in August 2017, he had been under house arrest until April 2019.

In September 2019, the Russian justice system had lifted "all preventive measures" against him and his three accused collaborators, then returned the file to the Prosecutor's Office, considering it incomplete.

A third expert opinion finally indicated at the beginning of June that the director and his team had received an overpayment of 128 million rubles in public aid for a project of the troupe "Seventh studio" of Mr. Serebrennikov.

This takes the opposite view from a previous expertise which had undermined the accusation.

Kirill Serebrennikov, who is the artistic director of the Gogol Center, a famous Moscow theater, has always denied the charges against him.

For his supporters, he pays for his freedom of creation and his sometimes daring pieces, mixing politics, sexuality and religion, in a country where the authorities are pushing for a resurgence of "traditional values". The authorities deny this interpretation of the facts.

Some 3,000 cultural figures petitioned the culture ministry on Monday to drop the lawsuit, citing an "affair that has been fabricated" by investigators.

Since his arrest, numerous appeals for him have been launched by personalities from the world of the arts in Russia and abroad.

Kirill Serebrennikov was noticed for his film "Leto", on the life of the Soviet rocker Viktor Tsoï, awarded in 2018 at the Cannes festival, and whose editing he had completed during his house arrest.

Because of this measure, he also missed the premiere at the Moscow Bolshoi of his ballet "Noureev" at the end of 2017, devoted to the star dancer who passed to the West in 1961. The show was caught in a controversy, delaying the premiere of six months.

© 2020 AFP