The appeal court upheld the sentence of Sergei Furgal – Kommersant

The Moscow Regional Court upheld the sentence of ex-governor of the Khabarovsk Territory Sergei Furgal, who was sentenced to 22 years in a maximum security colony for organizing murders. The appellate court also ordered a re-examination of the issue of payment of procedural costs. A TASS correspondent reports this from the courtroom.

“History has never seen anything like this, what we see is very bad,” said Sergei Furgal after the court decision was announced. During the appeal, the defense tried to prove the facts of pressure on the jury when they made their decision.

The defense insisted on overturning the sentence passed by the Lyubertsy court in the Moscow region in February 2023. Then the court sentenced Sergei Furgal to 22 years in the case of the murders of businessmen Evgeny Zori and Oleg Bulatov and the assassination attempt on businessman Alexander Smolsky (Article 105 and Article 222 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), committed between 2004 and 2005. Other defendants in the case – Andrei Paley and Andrei Karepov – received 17 and 21 years in prison, respectively, Marat Kadyrov was sentenced to nine and a half years.

In October, Kommersant wrote that after the verdict, three reserve jurors complained to Sergei Furgal’s defenders about the alleged pressure exerted on them by the presiding judge of the Lyubertsy City Court, Gennady Tsoi. According to their version, Mr. Tsoi repeatedly visited the room where the board met.

Read more in the Kommersant publication “The jury disobeyed the verdict.”

Polina Motyzlevskaya