WASHINGTON, August 26 (RIA Novosti - Alexei Berezin) -- The Federal District Court of San Francisco has sentenced former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko to nine years in prison and $10 million in fines for extortion, fraud, and money laundering, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Saturday.
In 1999 during his country's presidential election campaign, Lazarenko sought political asylum in the U.S., claiming he had faced three assassination attempts. Instead the U.S. authorities issued an order for his arrest.
Lazarenko was convicted in June 2004 and he has since remained under house arrest at an undisclosed location on $86 million bail.
He denied the charges.
The sentence is half of the maximum sought by prosecutors but five years more than his lawyers asked for.
Defense attorneys said that the prosecution was politically motivated and that they would appeal the sentence.
