Jailed former Khabarovsk region governor given additional 23 years in prison for fraud

A Moscow court has sentenced the jailed former governor of the Khabarovsk region in Russia’s Far East to a further 23 years in a high-security penal colony in a separate criminal case, state-affiliated business news outlet RBC reported on Wednesday.

The charges against Sergey Furgal included fraud, money laundering and abuse of authority. Furgal will serve a total of 25 years in a high-security penal colony, with his previous sentence for conspiracy to murder and attempted murder and the new term running concurrently, according to RBC.

The second criminal case against Furgal was opened in October 2021, at which point he had already spent a year and a half in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison. According to investigators, Furgal embezzled funds from the Amurstal steel plant in the Khabarovsk region between 2018 and 2020, first as a deputy in Russia’s State Duma, and then as the Khabarovsk region governor, RBC said.

The court ruled that Furgal had created a criminal group that it alleged had embezzled over 2 billion rubles (€22 million) from Russian bank MSP and €7.5 million from the British company Global Metcorp Ltd, RBC continued. Both companies had ties to the Amurstal steel plant.

In 2020, Furgal was arrested and charged with organising the murder and the attempted murder of business rivals in 2004 and 2005 and was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2023.

As the far-right populist Liberal Democratic Party’s candidate, Furgal was elected governor of the Khabarovsk region in 2018, beating the incumbent Vyacheslav Shport of Russia’s ruling United Russia party in a landslide that was widely seen as a protest vote. Furgal’s subsequent prosecution was widely seen as politically motivated due to his popularity.

Due to ongoing protests in Furgal’s defence in the Khabarovsk region, a court recognised the I/We are Sergey Furgal movement, set up to support him, as extremist in February 2024, and banned it nationwide.