DIRECTOR FOUND GUILTY OF FRAUD AVOIDS JAIL TIME

MOSCOW Award-winning Russian film and theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov was given a suspended threeyear jail sentence on Friday after being convicted of embezzlement, a much more lenient punishment than his supporters had expected.

Many in the liberal cultural establishment saw the case as a bid to silence someone whose work mocked the role of the church and state in Russian society, and leading critic of the Kremlin Alexei Navalny dismissed it as a fabrication.

The 50-year-old artistic director of Moscow’s Gogol Centre theatre was found guilty of leading a criminal group with that stole $2.55 million in state funds. Prosecutors had demanded six years’ jail; the defendants denied any wrongdoing.

The court ordered them to return the allegedly stolen funds, and fined Serebrennikov $15,700.