By RIA Novosti
New York : A former Russian official at the United Nations sentenced to jail for four years and three months for money laundering will be sent Monday to serve his term in a US jail.
“I am willing to surrender to the US authorities, but I refuse to acknowledge my guilt and I am hoping that I will be returned home,” Vladimir Kuznetsov said, adding that his lawyers had moved papers to appeal his sentence.
Kuznetsov, 49, who worked as a Russian expert in the United Nations Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, was arrested in September 2005 after borrowing $300,000 from a Russian colleague, allegedly knowing that the funds had been acquired by criminal means.
Kuznetsov previously held diplomatic immunity as a UN employee, but after former secretary general Kofi Annan revoked the status, the FBI arrested him.
He has spent the last two years under house arrest in a rented New York apartment.
The ex-diplomat was sentenced earlier this month by a US district court, and ordered to pay a total of $73,000 in fines.
The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier expressed disappointment with the court ruling and said it might ask the US government to return Kuznetsov to Russia under the convention on the transfer of convicts.