Former Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev was sentenced to eight years in jail on Friday over bribery.
He was found guilty of soliciting a $2 million bribe from Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin.
A court in Moscow found Ulyukayev guilty of demanding and accepting the bribe on November 14 last year.
Ulyukayev had denied the charges, saying he’d thought the bag holding the bribe was a gift of expensive alcohol.
According Reuters, the high-profile court case shone a rare light on infighting among the Russian elite ahead of a presidential election in March.
Incumbent Vladimir Putin is expected to win and was widely seen as a test of how powerful Sechin, a Putin ally, is.
