Traffic police have fined nine drivers caught repeatedly violating traffic rules in the center of Tomsk during wedding celebrations in early October, a news report said Wednesday.
"We fined the last, ninth driver in the wedding cortege on charges of driving into a lane of oncoming traffic," a Tomsk police spokeswoman told RIA-Novosti.
The spokeswoman said that police had filed 13 misdemeanor charges against the wedding guests, whose driving provoked outrage among bloggers after a clip showing them driving on Oct. 6 along Tomsk's Prospekt Lenina circulated on YouTube.
The video, taken by a dashboard camera, shows expensive foreign-made cars, including an Audi, Lexus, Bentley and BMW, repeatedly running red lights, holding up other motorists and driving on the wrong side of the road.
At the time, unconfirmed reports said that the wedding guests were from the North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia and that one of the drivers had been fined for traffic violations as many as 19 times over the past year and a half.
Running a red light carries a maximum fine of 1,000 rubles ($32), while driving on the wrong side of the road is punishable by a license suspension for up to six months, RIA-Novosti said.
The Tomsk wedding scandal recalls a similar incident in Moscow at the end of September, when a cortege of Dagestani wedding guests fired shots from an air gun while driving through central Moscow.
Police later arrested two of the guests for short-term sentences of five days and 15 days for resisting police and swearing in a public place, respectively. Other guests were left off with minor fines and misdemeanor offenses.
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