Judge Olesya Mendeleeva of the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow handed down the sentence, RBC reported from the courtroom. Kopaygorodsky was also convicted of large-scale embezzlement and money laundering, stripped of his medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II degree, and barred from holding leadership posts in government bodies for 14.5 years after his release, TASS reported.
His wife, Yanina, was sentenced to nine years in a general-regime colony and a 500 million ruble fine. She was convicted of mediating her husband's corruption crimes and of forcing a witness to give false testimony. Case materials show that while under house arrest she gave one witness 500,000 rubles.
Prosecutors had sought 21 years for Kopaygorodsky and 16 years for his wife. The defense argued for acquittal. The defendants pleaded not guilty.
The former mayor faced seven counts of corruption. Among them was accepting a bribe from Boris Yunanov, founder of the construction company Neometriya, in exchange for favorable business conditions, and patronage of Nikolai Shikhidi, head of the company ISK Eurostroy, who in return renovated and furnished the mayor's house and landscaped the grounds. He was also accused of misappropriating municipal property.
Kopaygorodsky served as Sochi mayor from September 2019. He resigned in May 2024 and later went to fight in the war against Ukraine. Sources in Russian state agencies said he was detained in Luhansk and taken to Moscow.
Authorities confiscated property worth more than 1.6 billion rubles from the Kopaygorodsky family, including 50 real estate properties, 15 land plots and ten cars. The court additionally ordered another 440 million rubles turned over to the state.