Officials at a Moscow jail where a businesswoman...

Vera Trifonova died of heart failure on Friday in the hospital wing of the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention facility. The 53-year-old was arrested in December and charged with attempting to sell a seat in the Russian parliament.

"Given the severe clinical course and adverse clinical and rehabilitative prognosis of Trifonova"s illness, the [Matrosskaya Tishina] administration...twice sent the investigators...requests to change the terms of detention," the press service of the Moscow department of the Federal Penitentiary Service said.

It added that the petitions were sent on March 25 and April 9, 2010.

Moscow prosecutors have opened an investigation into Trifonova"s death.

The businesswoman, who headed KitElitNedvizhimost real estate agency, was alleged to have attempted to sell a State Duma seat to Pavel Razumov, a board chairman of MFT-Bank, for $1.5 million.

According to investigators, Trifonova and her accomplice Georgy Shamiryan, a former

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