BISHKEK (TCA) — The Kyrgyz Prosecutor-General’s Office has rejected a request for a retrial of opposition leader Omurbek Tekebaev, who was sentenced in 2017 to eight years in prison on corruption charges that he denies, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reported.
Tekebaev’s lawyer, Taalaikul Toktakunova, told RFE/RL on June 12 that the Prosecutor-General’s Office said it saw no grounds for a new trial.
Attorneys representing Tekebaev said earlier that they found discrepancies in the case materials justified a retrial.
Tekebaev and his co-defendant, former Emergency Situations Minister Duishonkul Chotonov, were convicted of bribe-taking and sentenced to eight years in prison each in August 2017.
The court also ordered the confiscation of the two men’s assets and barred them from holding public offices for three years.
Investigators said Tekebaev and Chotonov received a $1 million bribe from a Russian businessman in 2010, when Tekebaev was deputy prime minister.
Both denied any wrongdoing.
Tekebaev is the leader of the opposition Ata-Meken (Fatherland) party, which said the trial was a politically motivated effort to keep him out of the Central Asian country’s October 2017 presidential election.
Both Tekebaev and then President Almazbek Atambayev were members of the interim government that came to power after a popular revolution ousted authoritarian President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in 2010.
But Ata-Meken strongly opposed a referendum on constitutional changes that passed with a strong push from Atambayev’s office, and Tekebaev then called for the president to be impeached.
