Sochi’s former mayor reportedly left to fight in Ukraine. Authorities brought him back, and a court has now sentenced him to 15 years for bribery.
Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court sentenced former Sochi Mayor Alexey Kopaygorodsky to 15 years in a high-security prison after finding him guilty of accepting 248 million rubles in bribes.
The court also fined Kopaygorodsky 500 million rubles, barred him from holding leadership positions in the civil service for 14.5 years, and stripped him of his Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland,” Second Class, TASS reported.
His wife, Yanina, who was also a defendant in the bribery case, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 500 million rubles.
The court also ordered the confiscation of another 440 million rubles from the Kopaygorodsky family, with the money to go to the state.
Prosecutors had sought a 21-year prison sentence for the former mayor and a 16-year sentence for his wife.
The defense sought acquittals. Both defendants pleaded not guilty.
Alexey Kopaygorodsky became mayor of Sochi in September 2019. In May 2024, he resigned “to take up a new position.” He reportedly went to fight in the war against Ukraine. In September, reports emerged that he had been charged in a bribery case and placed in pretrial detention. Sources cited by Russian state news agencies said Kopaygorodsky had been detained in Luhansk and taken to Moscow.
Among other allegations, Kopaygorodsky was accused of taking bribes from local business owners in exchange for preferential treatment for their businesses while serving as mayor. His wife was also charged in the bribery case and later faced an additional charge of bribing a witness. Case documents indicate that, while under house arrest, she gave one of the witnesses a 500,000-ruble bribe.
Assets worth more than 1.6 billion rubles were confiscated from the Kopaygorodskys, including 50 properties, 15 plots of land, and 10 cars.
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