You're reading: Man found guilty of largest tax evasion in Russia, sentenced to 2.5 years in prison

A Moscow court has found a former executive guilty of evading the largest tax payment in Russian history, which exceeds an equivalent of $1 billion. 

Moscow’s Presnensky District Court found Andrei Shmakov, a former general director of the Glenik-M investment company, guilty of evading a tax payment of 32.4 billion rubles and sentenced him to 2.5 years in a general security penitentiary on Friday.

The investigation determined that the 51-year-old businessman presented “deliberately false revenue tax declarations for 2006-2007.” The information on operational expenditures related to the acquisition of securities was untrue, as their price was not economically substantiated and was did not conform to other documents, it said.

These actions caused damage to the Russian budget in the form of unpaid revenue taxes amounting to a sum of 32.4 billion rubles, it said.

The civilian lawsuit in the case was filed by the Federal Tax Service. In order to secure the claim, the company’s financial assets have been frozen.