Russia's former nuclear minister, indicted in Pittsburgh three years ago along with a former Westinghouse nuclear engineer, was found guilty yesterday in his native country of fraud and abuse of office in stealing $110 million meant for Russian nuclear safety programs.

Yevgeny Adamov, who served as atomic minister from 1998 to 2001, will be sentenced today in Moscow and faces 10 years in prison.

The case against Mr. Adamov in Russia has started and stopped several times since 2006, most recently when he demanded that a different judge hear the case.

In April, a new trial began under a new judge.

Yesterday, the judge spent most of the day reciting the lengthy verdict against Mr. Adamov, saying he'll finish today and then impose a sentence.

The judge said Mr. Adamov conspired with two other Russians, Revmir Frayshtut and Dmitriy Pismenniy, in a scheme to defraud the Russian government of $110 million owed in connection with the sale of Russian uranium on the world market, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Mr. Adamov still faces federal charges in Pittsburgh stemming from a 2005 indictment detailing similar fraud.

His American co-conspirator in Pittsburgh, Mark Kaushansky, 56, a Ukrainian immigrant who worked at Westinghouse, is already serving 15 months in federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va., for conspiracy and tax evasion in connection with the diverted money.

Federal prosecutors said Mr. Adamov and Mr. Kaushansky formed two shell companies to funnel U.S. Department of Energy funds to bank accounts in Pittsburgh and Delaware that they had established.

Yesterday's guilty verdict in Moscow generated extensive media interest in Russia, but federal agents here were also following it closely.

The former minister was originally detained in Berne, Switzerland, in May 2005 at the request of the U.S. after a federal grand jury here accused him of embezzling $9 million in international aid money that was supposed to be used for upgrading nuclear reactors in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Mr. Adamov had been head of the Research and Design Institute for Power, known as NIKIET, a Russian nuclear research institute which designed the RBMK reactor used at Chernobyl and other plants throughout the former Soviet Union.

Fearing another Chernobyl-like disaster, the U.S. and other nations in 1992 started providing money and technical help to upgrade 15 power plants. In 1998, President Boris Yeltsin appointed Mr. Adamov to run the Federal Ministry of Atomic Energy, although Vladimir Putin later discharged him in 2001 and he returned to running NIKIET.

After his indictment here in 2005, he became the focus of an extradition battle.

U.S. authorities wanted him to face trial in Pittsburgh, but Russian officials were afraid he'd reveal state secrets, including classified information about Russia's construction of a nuclear reactor in Iran, if he were extradited to America.

One legislator from a Russian political party known for outlandish statements even suggested that special forces "liquidate" Mr. Adamov rather than let him be extradited to the U.S., where some legislators feared he might give up sensitive information in exchange for leniency.

In the end, though, he was extradited to Moscow in December 2005 and has been there since.