Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny was on Sunday preparing his campaign to challenge the pro-Kremlin elite in Moscow mayoral elections after returning home to a hero’s welcome following his release from prison. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has returned to Moscow after his surprise release from jail and says he will push forward in his campaign to become mayor of the Russian capital. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Top Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny told hundreds of cheering supporters that he would push ahead with his bid to become Moscow mayor after his surprise release from jail pending an appeal of an embezzlement conviction. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A court in Russia’s northern Kirov region on Friday ordered the release of protest leader Alexei Navalny pending an appeal against his five year sentence on embezzlement charges.
The court ruled that keeping Navalny in custody would deprive him of his right to stand in mayoral elections in Moscow on September 8. Navalny had been accepted as a registered candidate for the polls earlier this week.
Navalny and his co-accused Pyotr Ofitserov were immediately released in court and Navalny embraced his wife Yulia, an AFP correspondent reported.
“This is a major surprise,” a jubilant Navalny said after being released from the glass-fronted defendant’s cage. “What happened now is a completely unique phenomenon in the system of Russian justice,” he added.
The court ruling came after prosecutors, in a surprise move, asked the court to release Navalny from custody until the appeals process is over, at which time his sentence would come into full force if his conviction is upheld.
It was not entirely clear what had motivated the prosecutors to make the appeal, which came as thousands of people rallied on the streets of Moscow in support of Navalny.
Navalny’s aides had said on Thursday that he would pull out of the mayoral race after his conviction and jailing, but the charismatic protest leader said he would now consider is options after returning to Moscow.
He said he could still stand as a candidate or urge supporters to boycott the race.
His release from custody on Friday is conditional on him staying in Moscow, his city of residence, pending his appeal.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A Russian court is deliberating on a surprise request by prosecutors to free opposition leader Alexei Navalny one day after he was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in prison.
Navalny is a registered candidate for this fall’s Moscow mayoral election. The request put Friday to the court for the Kirov region said incarceration would prevent him from exercising his right to seek election and asked that he be freed pending completion of the appeal process for his embezzlement conviction.
It was not clear how long the court’s three-judge panel would deliberate.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is pulling out of the Moscow mayoral race and is calling on his supporters to boycott the vote, his election chief said Thursday.
“A decision has been made to boycott the elections,” Leonid Volkov told AFP, saying Navalny has decided to quit the race.
The announcement came just hours after Navalny was sentenced by a Russian court to five years in a penal colony on embezzlement charges.
Volkov said Navalny would formally notify the Moscow Election Commission of his decision shortly.
“It would be strange if we participated in some sort of beating, turned the other cheek,” Volkov said separately in televised remarks, referring to the mayoral race.
The Election Commission on Wednesday registered Navalny, the 37-year-old leader of the protest movement against President Vladimir Putin, as a candidate to run in mayoral polls on September 8.
The move was seen as an ominous sign, with critics saying Navalny would never have been allowed to campaign had he had any real chance at standing in the tightly-controlled vote.
An opinion poll by the independent Levada Centre showed that current Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin is set to retain the post with 78 percent of the vote.
Navalny was expected to come second with eight percent.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A Russian judge has found opposition leader Alexei Navalny guilty of embezzlement, a finding that could bring the charismatic anti-corruption blogger and Moscow mayoral candidate up to six years in prison.
Judge Sergei Blinov did not immediately state the sentence on Thursday. Under Russian court proceedings, full verdict readings can take several hours.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A Russian court will on Thursday deliver a verdict in the embezzlement trial of top protest leader Alexei Navalny, an abrasive critic of President Vladimir Putin who risks years in prison and an end to his budding political career.
Navalny, 37, who emerged as a powerful new political force in mass protests against Putin that broke out in December 2011, dismisses charges he colluded to steal money in a timber deal while acting as an unpaid advisor to the governor in the northern Kirov region.
Prosecutors in the regional capital of Kirov are seeking a six-year prison colony sentence, but any conviction would disqualify Navalny from politics.
Navalny bluntly predicted on his blog Wednesday that he would be found guilty, and that Putin would be behind the decision.
Putin would either “wimp out” and order a suspended sentence or “get up the courage and it will be a jail term”, he wrote.
The verdict comes a day after Navalny was accepted as a candidate for the high-profile Moscow mayoral race in September, raising the bizarre prospect that he could run for office while already behind bars.
Navalny’s disqualification from politics would only take effect after the appeals process is exhausted, so he could still theoretically campaign during this period.
The trial is seen by the opposition as part of a wider crackdown on activists who took to the streets to demand an end to Putin’s rule in the run-up to his return to the Kremlin in May 2012 for a third term.
Many have spent months in cells awaiting trial and face long jail terms for crowd violence.
Ahead of the trial in Kirov, a sleepy city 600 kilometres (370 miles) from Moscow, young supporters handed out leaflets on the main square urging passers-by to come to the court to back “Putin’s number one enemy.”
International journalists swarmed the city to jostle for the courtroom’s 60 seats to hear judge Sergei Blinov’s ruling.
Navalny has eloquently defended himself in the hurried trial, which began in April. Judge Blinov, who has never acquitted anyone in his career, has listened largely silently, sometimes taking notes.
The trial has given little explanation for the alleged embezzlement, given Navalny’s apparently humdrum lifestyle in a small flat in a Moscow suburb with his wife Yulia and two children.
Supporters in Kirov were downbeat ahead of the verdict, even as Navalny’s selection as mayoral candidate raised hopes of a last-minute reprieve from the authorities.
“I’d like to believe that they have a cunning plan, but they are not cunning: they have chosen the option of force,” said supporter Nikolai Lyaskin who travelled from Moscow for the trial.
With his streetwise rhetoric and charisma, Navalny emerged as the most effective of the opposition leaders who led the unprecedented protests against Putin.
Navalny has said he wants to challenge Putin in the next presidential elections in 2018 and coined the phrase “party of crooks and thieves” to describe the ruling United Russia party.
In a typically uncompromising gesture, Navalny this week published a detailed report accusing one of Putin’s closest allies, the head of Russian …read more
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Alexei Navalny, an obscure adviser to a provincial governor just four years ago, shot up to become the Kremlin’s public enemy No.1. The web-savvy 36-year old lawyer overcame a state-imposed national media blackout and minimal funds by exploiting his blog and Twitter account to reach hundreds of thousands of Russians.
Navalny went on trial Wednesday in Kirov on embezzlement charges but was granted an adjournment for more time to prepare. Navalny, the opposition’s most popular and charismatic figure, says the charges were fabricated on President Vladimir Putin‘s orders. Here’s a glance at his campaigns which provoked official wrath.
CORRUPTION INVESTIGATIONS:
Navalny first made a name for himself in 2009 by buying minority stakes in state-run companies and using his shareholder status to obtain internal documents. He then posted them on his blog, accusing officials of stealing more than $150 million from the state-controlled VTB bank and a staggering $4 billion from the oil pipeline operator Transneft.
His findings and rapier-like wit won Navalny a large network of followers, which he tapped for crowd-funding of his Foundation for Fighting Corruption. Its targets range from lawmakers who order luxury cars at taxpayers’ expense to local officials slow to fix potholes. Navalny’s document-based investigations have filled a gap in Russia, where investigative journalism has been severely limited by censorship and attacks on reporters.
KREMLIN’S PARTY:
While Putin still enjoys approval ratings that would be the envy of any Western leader, the Kremlin-run United Russia party, which includes the bureaucracy nationwide, has been widely despised for corruption, nepotism and inefficiency.
Navalny seized on that anger with a campaign to brand United Russia as “the party of crooks and thieves” and urged his followers to vote for any other of the parties running in the December 2011 parliamentary elections. United Russia ended up with its worst result ever and had to rely on massive vote-rigging — documented by independent observers — to retain its majority in parliament.
PROTEST MOVEMENT:
The egregious ballot fraud in the 2011 parliamentary vote triggered a series of massive street protests in Moscow that attracted up to 100,000 demonstrators who opposed Putin’s return to the presidency. Navalny rose to a rock star status, electrifying crowds by chanting “We are the power!” and claiming that “we have enough people to seize the
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/21Li2DUL7ZI/
The trial of a Russian opposition leader accused of embezzling half a million dollars’ worth of timber from a state-run company has started in a northwestern city.
Lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who spearheaded anti-government protests in 2011, and his former colleagues are accused of leading an organized criminal group that embezzled 16 million rubles ($500,000) worth of timber from a state-owned company in the city of Kirov.
As the trial began Tuesday, several dozen activists demonstrated in support of Navalny outside the courthouse in Kirov, chanting “We will not let you go!”
The charges not only threaten to send the 36-year-old Navalny to prison, but strike at the essence of his image as an anti-corruption activist. Navalny says the charges are an act of revenge for his exposure of high-level corruption.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/EB86xl7Vj68/
Far from the streets of Moscow where he galvanized tens of thousands in anti-government protests, Alexei Navalny faces trial this week on charges that could send him to prison for 10 years.
The trial, starting Wednesday in Kirov, 800 kilometers (500 miles) northeast of Moscow, accuses Navalny and his former colleague Pyotr Ofitserov of leading an organized criminal group that embezzled 16 million rubles ($500,000) worth of timber from a state-run company.
The charges not only threaten him with serious prison time, but strike at the essence of his image as a vociferous anti-corruption campaigner.
Even before Navalny became a key figure in the anti-government protests that erupted in 2011, the lawyer was a persistent thorn in the establishment’s side with his extensive blogging on Russia‘s staggering high-level corruption. Authorities admit the trial is connected to his prominent activities, although they deny overt political motivations.
Navalny, 36, insists the charges are a fabrication intended to silence him on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, who has cracked down on dissent since returning for a third term last year.
“Everyone’s known for years that if Putin ever made the decision to shut me down, then he’ll shut me down,” Navalny said Monday.
Navalny’s conviction appears all but certain. More than 99 percent of Russian trials end with a guilty verdict, according to Vadim Volkov and Kirill Titaev of the European University at St. Petersburg.
The charges were filed by the Investigative Committee, an FBI-like body solely accountable to Putin. Normally, the agency only handles high-profile crime and would leave a small alleged embezzlement case like Navalny’s to local authorities. But since Putin’s return to the presidency last May, the committee has become a highly politicized instrument at the front lines of his crackdown on dissent, filing charges against activists and loudly proclaiming their guilt in state-owned media.
In an interview Friday in the newspaper Izvestia, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said investigators would not have looked into a “banal theft” if not for Navalny’s investigations, which implicated high-ranking officials in corruption.
“If a person tries hard to attract attention, or if I can put it, teases authorities — ‘look at me, I’m so good compared to everyone else’ — well, then one gets more interested in his past and the process
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/QJe060CYzag/
The spokesman for Russia‘s chief investigative body says that a criminal probe of a Russian opposition leader was triggered by his fierce public stance.
In an interview published Friday in Izvestia daily, Vladimir Markin says that investigators would not have investigated a “banal theft” if that wasn’t for Alexei Navalny‘s reports alleging government corruption. Markin says this “teasing” provoked his agency to get involved in a case which normally would be left to local authorities.
Lawyer and blogger Navalny exposed official corruption and spearheaded a series of massive protests in Moscow against Putin’s return to the presidency in 2011 and 2012. Navalny goes on trial on Wednesday on charges of leading an organized crime group that stole timber worth 16 million rubles (about $500,000).
Navalny denies the charges.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/omUt5r9M2WY/
A prominent Russian opposition leader who made his name exposing official corruption says he hopes to win the next presidential election so he has the power to crack down on Russia‘s “current government of thieves.”
Alexei Navalny‘s statement marked the first time he openly declared his intention to run for president. Some observers saw Navalny’s move as an attempt to raise the ante ahead of his trial later this month on embezzlement charges, which he rejects as politically motivated.
Navalny, 36, said on the independent Rain TV late Thursday that he wants the nation’s top job in order to change life in Russia for the better and would see that Putin and his lieutenants end up in prison for their alleged abuses.
“I want to become president. I want to change the model of government” so the nation’s leaders “don’t lie and don’t steal.” He said his goal is to make sure the Russians “stop living in poverty and hopeless misery and live normally like in a European country.”
Navalny, a charismatic lawyer and popular blogger, exposed official corruption and became a key driving force behind a series of massive protests in Moscow against Putin’s return to the presidency. The rallies attracted more than 100,000 people in the largest outpouring of public anger since the 1991 Soviet collapse, but failed to prevent Putin’s return to the presidency in the March 2012 vote for another six-year term.
Navalny didn’t take part in the race and remained coy about his ambitions until Thursday’s announcement.
As the protests fizzled following Putin’s inauguration, the Kremlin-controlled parliament quickly stamped a series of repressive laws that introduced heavy fines for participants in unsanctioned rallies and requested non-government organizations that receive foreign funds and engage in loosely-defined political activities to register as “foreign agents,” the term invoking Soviet-era spying paranoia. In recent weeks, Russian prosecutors have launched searches of thousands of NGOs across the country to check their compliance with the law.
Scores of opposition activists have faced arrests, searches and criminal probes. Navalny is to go on trial in April 17 on charges of leading an organized crime group that stole more than 10,000 cubic meters of timber worth 16 million rubles (about $500,000) while he worked for a provincial governor. He has dismissed the charges as absurd and described them as an attempt by the Kremlin to sideline a political opponent.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Russia‘s top cop has a new star role at the heart of the Putin regime. His mission? Shut down the opposition.
Alexander Bastrykin’s Investigative Committee has become President Vladimir Putin‘s de facto political police, accountable to him alone. The fearsome organization was given the new mandate after Putin returned for a third term as president last year, embittered and shaken by huge protests against his rule.
As new raids, arrests and charges hit the opposition seemingly every week, Bastrykin’s inquisitorial zeal and the degree to which charges often strain credulity show how the Kremlin is ratcheting up its longstanding practice of using the law as a tool to crush political enemies.
“Bastrykin is a man who follows any order — he’ll shut anyone down on any charge — and that’s what makes him so valuable to Putin,” Alexei Navalny, a leading anti-corruption activist embroiled in four separate legal battles with the Investigative Committee, told The Associated Press in an interview.
Russia‘s opposition, weakened and fractured after the protests petered out, is now forced to spend much of its time fighting often outlandish allegations from the Investigative Committee. Navalny is to go on trial in April on charges of leading an organized crime group that stole more than 10,000 cubic meters of timber worth 16 million rubles (about $500,000) while he worked for a provincial governor.
Several activists face charges based on a documentary-style TV show that said they were pawns of a minor Georgian lawmaker, Givi Targamadze, whom the show depicted as a murky figure working in league with rogue oligarchs to seize the Kremlin. When one of the defendants, Leonid Razvozzhayev, said he had been kidnapped in Ukraine and tortured into signing a confession, investigators deported him to Siberia on charges of stealing 500 fur hats in 1997, even though he had been cleared of the charges long ago.
“Those charges are obviously crazy and have no legal basis, but to some degree, that’s part of the point,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin political consultant, said. “It shows that all legal measures have been thrown out the window, and that scares people.”
With Putin’s backing, Bastrykin appears to have a free hand. Ostensibly, his agency is a Russian counterpart to the FBI, handling special crimes like murders, corruption cases and organized crime. In practice, however, the Investigative Committee recalls the FBI under its volatile founder J. Edgar Hoover, who abused the bureau’s considerable power to …read more
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A senior lawmaker from the pro-Kremlin party has resigned his seat in parliament after an anti-corruption campaigner alleged that he owns properties in Florida worth more than $2 million.
Vladimir Pekhtin, chairman of the State Duma‘s ethics committee, announced his resignation at a parliament session on Wednesday, saying that he does so in order to protect his party from the scandal.
Copies of deeds and other legal documents revealed by Russian anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny indicated that Pekhtin together with his son own two condos in Miami Beach and a villa in Ormond Beach, Florida.
Pekhtin has denied owning the property although he admitted that his signatures on the deeds were genuine. Last week he told Izvestia daily that he “owns practically no property abroad.”
