Moscow (AFP)
Director and director Kirill Serebrennikov, a celebrated figure in the Russian arts community, was convicted on Friday of fraud for personal gain by a Moscow court in a controversial case.
"Serebrennikov (his co-defendants), (Iouri) Itine, (Konstantin) Malobrodski committed fraud ... of a particularly large scale", according to the judgment, read by judge Olesya Mendeleeva without immediately announcing the sentences imposed. The prosecution requested six years in prison against the director.
"Their actions were committed for the purpose of personal enrichment by defrauding the collaborators of the Ministry of Culture," she added.
The judge accused the defendants of having acted in a group and of Kirill Serebrennikov for having "directed all the members of the group and taken measures to conceal the thefts".
The prosecution has asked for the accused to be sentenced to between four and six years in prison. The defense asked for an acquittal.
Friday, Kirill Serebrennikov arrived in court wearing white sneakers, dressed in a black sweater and wearing a black sanitary mask and dark sunglasses.
Arrested in August 2017 while filming his film "Leto" in Saint Petersburg (north-west), he was taken to Moscow and then placed under house arrest until April 2019.
Many Russian and foreign cultural figures have expressed their support for him, believing that his art, in contradiction with the conservatism of the Russian authorities, could have made him enemies at the origin of his troubles.
Kirill Serebrennikov, artistic director of the Gogol Center, a famous Moscow theater, has always denied the charges against him.
Some 3,000 cultural figures on Monday called in a petition to the Ministry of Culture to drop the charges, denouncing a "case that has been fabricated" by investigators.
© 2020 AFP