Vladimir Kozhin, chief of the Office for Presidential Affairs, won a defamation lawsuit against opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta on Friday over a July report about corruption in the agency, the newspaper said in a statement.
A Moscow court ordered the newspaper to pay Kozhin 100,000 rubles ($3,200) and retract its statement that the Office of Presidential Affairs allotted 800 million rubles ($25 million) for a Sochi construction project that was already finished.
The reporter, Roman Anin, and businessman Valery Morozov, who made allegations in the article, were fined 30,000 rubles each, Novaya Gazeta said on its blog. The newspaper promised to appeal.
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