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Chechen Businessman Fined Over Moscow Hotel Shooting

Umar Dzhabrailov (Lyubimov Andrei / Moskva News Agency)

Chechen businessman and former senator Umar Dzhabrailov has been fined for a late summer shooting at a five-star hotel near the Kremlin.

Dzhabrailov is the founder of the pro-Kremlin Avanti business association and former owner of Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel.

He was detained in late August after firing a handgun at a Four Seasons Hotel in an incident that didn’t lead to casualties. Authorities charged the politician and entrepreneur with hooliganism.

Dzhabrailov was reportedly slapped with an administrative fine last month for drug offenses.

On Wednesday, a Moscow district court judge handed the businessman a 500,000-ruble ($8,500) fine over the shooting incident.

Prosecutors had asked for a 2-year suspended sentence, according to the Mediazona news website.

The tycoon ran for president in 2000, gaining 0.08 percent of the vote. He represented the republic of Chechnya in the Federation Council from 2004 to 2009 and served as deputy chairman of the Council’s international affairs committee during the same period.

His former business partner Paul Tatum, who was gunned down in November 1996, publicly accused the Chechen earlier that year of blackmailing him to squeeze him out of a hotel project.

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