Former Ukrainian prime miister Pavlo Lazarenko was jailed for nine years and fined £5.3m for money laundering, wire fraud and extortion. The sentence was half of the maximum sought by US prosecutors, who said the 53-year-old former premier misused his high office in the ex-Soviet republic to get rich through a series of business schemes.He was the first former head of government to be tried in the US since Manuel Noriega of Panama. A 12-member US jury in San Francisco convicted him in June 2004 and he has since remained under house arrest at an undisclosed location on £45.5m bail. Lazarenko denied he siphoned funds or accepted bribes in exchange for government contracts and favours, claiming his multi-million dollar fortune was earned legitimately at a time his country, emerging from the Soviet Union's collapse, had a new and lawless free-market economy.