Fancy Sausages and a $2 Million Bribe: A Trial Uncovers Kremlin Infighting<br />Mr. Sechin said the former minister had solicited the bribe in October 2016,<br />but only with a gesture: During a game of pool, he said, Mr. Ulyukayev held up two fingers, signaling that his price was $2 million.<br />Speaking of Mr. Sechin’s refusal to testify, Mr. Ulyukayev said the oil executive had vanished<br />and "only the smell of sulfur in the air was left," a reference to the "The Master and Margarita," the riotous Russian novel by Mikhail Bulgakov about the devil appearing in Stalin’s Moscow.<br />Mr. Sechin accused Mr. Ulyukayev of seeking the bribe in exchange for dropping objections to the<br />state oil company’s acquisition of a recently nationalized midsize oil producer, Bashneft.<br />Judge Semenova sentenced Mr. Ulyukayev, who had been locked in a struggle with Igor I. Sechin, the director of the state oil company Rosneft,<br />over how to revive the swooning Russian economy, to eight years in a penal colony and a fine of 130 million rubles, or $2.2 million.<br />15, 2017<br />MOSCOW — Aleksei V. Ulyukayev, a former economy minister in Russia who had clashed with a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin,<br />was convicted on Friday of soliciting a $2 million bribe, in a case that pulled back the curtain on Kremlin infighting.<br />Mr. Ulyukayev had been a prominent member of a liberal wing in the Russian government,<br />and he was accused of seeking a huge bribe from Mr. Sechin in exchange for acquiescing to a major oil deal he had initially opposed.
