MOSCOW -- A court in Russia has ruled that former Russian Economy Minister Aleksei Ulyukayev, who is serving an eight-year prison term on corruption charges, can be granted an early release.
The Moscow district court in Tver said on April 28 that the decision to release Ulyukayev was made a day earlier and will come into force on May 12, if prosecutors do not launch an appeal.
Ulyukayev was convicted in December 2017 of taking a "large bribe" and sentenced to eight years in a strict-regime prison. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 130 million rubles ($1.8 million).
Ulyukayev, who was fired by President Vladimir Putin hours after his arrest in the middle of the night in November 2016, is the highest-ranking Russian official to be arrested since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ulyukayev was found guilty of taking $2 million in cash from the chief executive of Russia's state-run oil giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate.
Prosecutors said the bribe was given in exchange for Ulyukayev approving the sale of a state-controlled oil company, Bashneft, to Rosneft.
Police detained Ulyukayev inside Rosneft headquarters shortly after Sechin handed him the cash inside a lockable brown bag, prosecutors said.
Ulyukayev has said he thought the package contained a gift but that a trap had been set for him.
Ulyukayev, 66, was seen as a member of the liberal camp in the Russian ruling elite, while Sechin, a longtime former deputy chief of staff at the Kremlin, is perceived as a hard-liner and one of Putin's closest allies.
