Russian legislator steps down after real-estate disclosure

A senior lawmaker from Russia’s ruling party, who was also the chairman of parliament’s ethics committee, resigned from the legislature Wednesday over revelations that he owned more than $1.3-million worth of luxury real estate in Florida that he did not list on required disclosure forms.The lawmaker, Vladimir Pekhtin, said he did not want the scandal to taint his party colleagues in United Russia, and announced his departure at a morning parliamentary session. He said he had not broken any law, but “there are very controversial documents that have been made public on the Internet,” and it wa…

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