Former leader of Russian youth organization imprisoned for 2.5 years for fraud

The former leader of pro-Kremlin movement Molodaya Rossiya (Young Russia) Maxim Mishchenko was sentenced to two and a half years in a penal colony for fraud, ruled Milena Yeliseyeva, judge of the Novomoskovsk city court of the Tula region.

Earlier, the prosecution asked that Mishchenko be sentence for two years and stripped of his state awards.

The second defendant in the case, Gennady Yefimov, was sentenced to one and a half years probation in view of his disability.

Mischenko and Yefimov received a grant of 650,000 rubles (approximately $11,200) to hold a conference on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but the event never took place. Mischenko then worked as deputy minister of the Tula region for domestic policy and Yefimov headed the Union for the Protection of the Disabled and Liquidators of the Chernobyl accident. Before the start of the criminal case in late 2015, Yefimov returned the allocated money to the budget.

Mishchenko began to work in the government of the Tula region in 2014. Before that, he headed the Molodaya Rossiya movement for almost ten years. From 2007 to 2011, Mishchenko was a State Duma deputy from United Russia. In 2016, after the initiation of the criminal case, Mishchenko signed a contract to serve in Russia’s airborne forces.