A Moscow judge on Monday sentenced former Senator Dmitry Savelyev to 10 years in a maximum-security penal colony after a jury earlier found him guilty of conspiring to murder his business partner.
Savelyev, who represented the Tula region in the upper-house Federation Council from 2016 until his arrest last August, was also stripped of his state awards, Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court said in a press release.
The case against Savelyev centered on a $100,000 payment he was said to have made in August 2023 to arrange the killing of his jailed business partner Sergei Ionov.
Prosecutors said the motive was a dispute over Ionov’s refusal to transfer his shares in a joint company. At the time of the plot, Ionov was already serving a prison sentence for embezzlement — charges that stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Savelyev.
The assassination never took place. A former prison service employee hired for the hit turned himself in to the FSB Security Service. Law enforcement then staged Ionov’s murder as part of a sting operation to gather evidence against Savelyev and his co-conspirators.
An accomplice, Sergei Dyukov, was sentenced to eight years in a maximum-security prison for inciting and aiding the conspiracy.
Investigators identified Dyukov as a relative of a friend of Savelyev who had also been involved in the scheme. That person, Yury Nefedov, previously pleaded guilty and received a four-year prison sentence.
Savelyev had pleaded not guilty during the trial.
The court ordered Savelyev to pay 5 million rubles ($66,000) in moral damages to Ionov. Dyukov was ordered to pay 1 million rubles.
Savelyev was a member of the ruling United Russia party. The party suspended his membership following his arrest in August and had said it would formally expel him upon a guilty verdict.
Before his arrest, Savelyev reportedly transferred business assets valued at 1 billion rubles ($13.2 million) and an estate near London valued at $15.6 million to his sons.
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