The Moscow Regional Court on Wednesday formally acquitted a group of nationalists headed by former military intelligence Colonel Vladimir Kvachkov on charges connected to an attempt on the life of Rusnano chief Anatoly Chubais and awarded them 211,000 rubles ($6,900) in damages.
The group of four was cleared by a jury last month in a retrial over the 2005 attack on Chubais, a key architect of the country's post-Soviet economic reforms.
The damages are to be paid by the federal government and are meant to reimburse legal fees, but the defendants are also entitled to sue the state for emotional distress and loss of earnings during the legal proceedings, the court said in a statement.
The case, which remains unsolved, was returned to the Moscow region branch of the Investigative Committee for a new investigation, the statement said.
A jury in the Moscow Regional Court initially acquitted Kvachkov, an outspoken anti-Semite, along with former paratroopers Robert Yashin and Alexander Naidenov and nationalist writer Ivan Mironov, in 2008, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision last year.
Prosecutors did not attend Wednesday's hearing, and it remained unclear whether they would appeal. But Kvachkov said in the courtroom that he expected them to appeal, Interfax reported.
The Prosecutor General's Office could not be reached immediately for comment Wednesday.
Chubais said after the second jury acquittal in August that he still considered Kvachkov as the mastermind behind the shooting and bombing attack on his cortege on a highway in the Moscow region.
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