MOSCOW, March 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Supreme Court has sent for retrial a seven-year criminal case for alleged bribery in the adoption of Russian children by foreigners, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from a courtroom Wednesday.

The Supreme Court said it "ruled to overturn the guilty verdict in this case and to send the case for a new hearing to the same court but with a new panel."

On September 8, 2006 a court in Volgograd, a city on the Volga River, found Nadezhda Fratti, now an Italian citizen, guilty of bribing officials and forging documents, and gave her a four-year suspended sentence.

Tatyana Chaplina, former director of the Kirov orphanage, received a five-year suspended sentence, while Antonina Tekucheva, chief doctor at the orphanage, was given a three-year suspended sentence.

The court dropped charges against a former specialist of the regional education committee Valentina Gerusova because the statute of limitations in her crime had expired.

Fratti's lawyer Tatiana Prilipko said the sentence contained "absurd conclusions" and the court had failed to prove that the defendants were interested in giving and receiving bribes.

She also said law enforcement agencies had put pressure on the defendants during the investigation.

"They were repeatedly threatened and blackmailed and claimed this during the trial but the court did not consider this in sentencing," Prilipko said.

According to investigators, in 1993-2001 Fratti acted as a mediator for Italians who wanted to adopt Russian children. Tekucheva, Chaplina and Gerusova were charged with receiving bribes from Fratti for their assistance in speeding up the adoption process.

The case has already been heard in Volgograd three times since 2002.

The problem surrounding foreign adoptions was on the agenda of interstate consultations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi in Bari, southern Italy.

The two leaders said in a joint communique that a bilateral agreement on the issue may be signed in the near future.