The Lefortovsky District Court of Moscow received criminal cases of fraud and contempt of court brought against opposition politician Alexei Navalny. According to the court file, now the materials of both cases are with the judge.
However, the name of the judge is not yet known. The date of the preliminary meeting is also not specified.
Recall that five criminal cases are now being considered against Alexei Navalny. One of them is about creating and leading an extremist community. The ICR opened a case against Alexei Navalny, Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov. According to the investigation, Navalny, being the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation *, “in order to carry out extremist activities aimed at changing the foundations of the constitutional order in Russia, undermining public security,” created a kind of extremist community and led it.
The second case is about fraud during the financing of Navalny’s election campaign in 2013. In 2014, the TFR became interested in the transfers of Navalny’s supporters to his account in the Yandex.Money system. Investigators considered the campaign financing scheme proposed by the campaign headquarters to be fraudulent. Then the municipal deputy Konstantin Yankauskas, the leader of the Moscow Party of Progress, businessman Nikolai Lyaskin and Vladimir Ashurkov, who was then the executive director of the FBK, transferred 1 million rubles each to Navalny’s electoral account. After that, they turned to supporters with a request to compensate for their expenses by transferring any amount to the “Yandex wallet” of the headquarters. They promised to spend all the funds on Navalny’s political activities. The TFR believes that the financing of Navalny’s election campaign in this way is a fraud committed on an especially large scale and organized by a group of people. The investigation was reopened in the spring of 2021.
The third criminal case was initiated at the end of 2020 on the fact of fraud with the money of FBK donors. The TFR then reported that the case had been opened against Navalny “and other persons.” The investigation believes that the oppositionist was the actual head of a number of organizations, including the FBK, to whose accounts more than 588 million rubles were received as donations. Of these funds, according to investigators, Navalny “spent 356 million rubles for personal purposes,” namely, “acquisition of personal property, material assets and payment for vacations abroad.” “The funds collected by citizens were stolen,” the ICR assured. Navalny himself later said that the fraud case was “totally fabricated.” The politician has repeatedly stressed that he never spent the fund’s funds on personal needs.
The fourth criminal case on money laundering at FBK* was initiated on August 3, 2019. There are still no suspects, much less accused, in the case. The fifth criminal case – contempt of court – was initiated as a result of the process of insulting a veteran. The fact is that during the trial, Navalny repeatedly entered into a skirmish with the judge, which the state prosecutor considered contempt of court.