DUSHANBE, April 8, Asia-Plus  -- The Supreme Court on April 8 ruled that Marouf Orifov, the director general of the Dushanbe company M&P with participation of foreign capital, which owns a chain of supermarkets ORIMA in Dushanbe and Kulob, be given a jail term of eight years and six months and that he should serve it in a high-security penal colony.  The sentence also included confiscation of personal property.   

The sentence followed his conviction on charges of tax evasion (Article 320, Part 2) and bribe giving (Article 292, Part 2, Point B).   

We will recall that a prosecutor in the trial of Orifov asked the Supreme Court on April 4 to sentence Orifov to a 4-year prison term with holding him a minimum-security penal colony.  The prosecutor asked the court to find Orifov 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.   

Speaking in an interview with Asia-Plus, Orifov’s defense lawyer, Sergey Mirzoyev, denounced the sentence and vowed to appeal against “the unfair sentence.”  “This case should be considered at a level of state policy because the matter is of infringement of rights of companies with participation of foreign capital,” the lawyer said.

Mirzoyev noted that that Orifov assumes 70 percent ownership interest in the Dushanbe company M&P and all his property will be confiscated.       

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

Orifov 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.