Man gets 6 years for stealing $20 mln from Turkmenistan bank.

MOSCOW, May 31 (Itar-Tass) - Moscow's Zamoskvorechye court on Monday
sentenced Savely Burstein to six years in prison for stealing 20 million
dollars from Turkmenistan's Central Bank.
"The court found Burstein, 53, who has Russian-Israeli citizenship,
guilty under Criminal Code articles on "fraud" and "money laundering,"
judge Andrei Fedin announced.
"Burstein committed fraud through complex covert transactions, which
appeared legal, but in actual fact were aimed at realizing a criminal
intent," Fedin said.
The court said the defendant had acted as a member of group of persons
whose identifies had not been fully ascertained. Some are on the wanted
list, and others have died since.
The verdict notes that the money had been transferred through the
SWIFT system of bank-to-bank payments. Burstein participated in devising
the plan of embezzlement. He studied the situation in detail before
implementing the schemes, acting under fake documents and assumed name.
Burstein pleaded not guilty and refused to testify. However the court
said his guilt was fully proven by the evidence it had examined.
Burstein's lawyer Anna Stavitskaya told Itar-Tass that she would
appeal against the verdict, claiming the court had failed to prove her
client's guilt.
The investigators said Burstein, as a member of an organized group
comprising three Russian citizens (representatives of the leadership of
Moscow banks) and two Turkmen citizens, stole 20 million dollars of
Turkmenistan's money, by remitting it from the accounts of the republic's
Central Bank in Ashgabat to a foreign currency corresponding account of a
Moscow bank in September 2002.
"After a number of financial schemes, Burstein obtained the
opportunity to manage the funds at his discretion," the Prosecutor
General's Office said.
The money was transferred to the Russian Deposit Bank. Next, the group
of criminals opened an account in the name of a Vietnamese citizen, and
19.3 million dollars were cashed after a commission was deducted from the
sum.
Burstein was put on the Interpol wanted list in April 2003. He was
detained in the Czech Republic in April 2008 and extradited to Russia in
the summer.
Another defendant, chairman of the Russian Deposit Bank board Dmitry
Leus was arrested in January 2003. In March 2004, Moscow's Zamoskvorechye
court found him guilty of fraud and sentenced to four years in a general
regime penitentiary.
In February 2006, the Kuibyshevsky court of the Samara region granted
him parole.
The Prosecutor General's Office said another suspect in the case was
chairman of the board of directors of Industrial Expert Bank Aisoltan
Niyazov.
-0-myz/usn