DUSHANBE, April 5, Asia-Plus  -- A sentence on Marouf Oripov, director general of the Dushanbe company M&P, which owns a chain of supermarkets Orima in Dushanbe and Kulob, is expected to be passed on April 7.

A prosecutor in the trial of Oripov asked the Supreme Court on April 4 to sentence Oripov to a 4-year prison term with holding him a minimum-security penal colony. 

The prosecutor asked the court to find Oripov guilty under two articles of the country’s Criminal code: Article 320 (giving bribe) and Article 292 (tax evasion).  The prosecutor added that the charge of forgery should be repudiated because of insufficiency of proof.   

We will recall that proceedings started on March 13 with the reading of the indictment, which charged Oripov with giving bribe, tax evasion and forgery.      

In the meantime, three defense lawyers of Oripov noted that investigation had failed to produce proofs to support the remaining two charges their client faces and asked the court to discharge Oripov.      

One of Oripov’s defense lawyers, Sergey Mirzoyev, in particular, noted that Oripov did not have motives to give bribe.  “Besides, video materials do not specifically report the fact of transfer of bribe,” said the defense lawyer.  “Moreover, there are no fingerprints of Oripov on banknotes totaling $10,000 that he allegedly gave to the security officers.”   

On the charge of tax evasion, Mirzoyev said that in its activity, M&P has been governed by the tax legislation that was in effect in 1997, when the company was founded, but not “double standards” as the prosecutor says.      

Marouf Oripov considers himself innocent of the charges he faces, claiming that all charges brought against him are false.

We will recall that at first, the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) instituted criminal proceedings against Oripov last summer on charge of giving bribe, but later, the case was transferred to the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption. 

Oripov was detained in July 2007 when he was trying to give $10,000 in bribe to the GKNB investigator.  Inspections carried out by the GKNB economic squad last July revealed that more than 1,500 tons of confectionery and other products beyond their shelf life were stored in the M&P warehouses in Dushanbe.