A verdict of guilty was recently returned upon a Yekaterinburg-based pirated videos trader; the public prosecutor, who insisted upon the sentence, explained the offender had done large-scale damage to the copyright holders, the district division of the Russian Federation General Prosecutor’s Office reports.

In the course of the court sessions, the prosecution provided exhaustive evidence of how the thirty-one-year-old Alexander Okunev had been selling pirated audio and video discs in a store in Griboyedov St. in Yekaterinburg since the fall of 2007. He used to buy the fake goods by wholesale in KOR Trade Center; each pirated disc contained several feature films, with the price of the products coming to only 100 RUR per disc.

After the Economic Offense Department’s officers made a check purchase in July 2009, the entrepreneur was detained in the act of selling a counterfeit DVD and later involved in a criminal lawsuit, with charges based on Article 146 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code (copyright infringement).

The officers confiscated 200 counterfeit DVDs with over 1,200 feature films on them. It has been estimated that Alexander Okunev’s unlawful actions did about 9.5 million RUR worth of damage to such renowned companies as Disney, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Universal Pictures.

Having considered the evidence provided by the prosecution, the court pronounced a sentence of 2.5 years in prison (with a probationary period) for Alexander Okunev.