(Bloomberg) - Igor Sechin, the powerful head of Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft PJSC, passed off a $2 million bribe as a gift of fine wine, according to Alexei Ulyukayev, who’s on trial in the first graft prosecution of a minister under President Vladimir Putin.

Ulyukayev, the former economy minister, in his first substantive comments on the case since his arrest a year ago, denied accepting the money as a bribe and told a Moscow court on Monday that Sechin had set him up after a meeting in Goa, India. He said the Rosneft chief, a close ally of Putin, regularly gave him large gifts, including expensive watches and a model of an oil rig.

“He promised in Goa that he would give me wine that I’d never tried before,” Ulyukayev said from the stand, according to the RIA Novosti news service. “I never doubted that it was a high-quality alcoholic drink in the bag. The size and weight seemed to correspond.”