The Russian authorities announced on Tuesday the opening of an investigation into “large-scale fraud” against the opposition Alexei Navalni, convalescing abroad since his alleged poisoning in the middle of this year.
The Russian Investigation Committee said in a statement that it suspects that Navalni would have spent 356 million rubles ($ 4.8 million) of donations collected by various organizations for his personal use.
The authorities mention in particular donations to the Fund to Fight Corruption, founded by the opposition, and to five other human rights organizations of which Navalni is the “de facto director.”
The Investigation Committee maintains that Navalni used that money “for the acquisition of personal and material property, as well as for the payment of expenses”, including vacations abroad.
Russian law provides a penalty of up to ten years in prison for this crime.
“It seems that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is having a fit of hysteria,” the opponent reacted on Twitter and called on his followers to “mock” this new investigation by continuing to donate to their organizations.
He also claimed that the new case was related to his alleged poisoning in Siberia in late August, when he claimed to be the victim of a Kremlin-ordered attack with a nerve agent.
Russia claims there is no evidence of such a crime, despite Navalni passing out on a plane in Siberia and results from three European laboratories establishing that he was poisoned.
“They try to send me to prison because I did not die and then I looked for my murderers,” Navalni said Tuesday.
The opponent published last week a video of a telephone conversation with a suspected FSB member in which the latter, thinking he was speaking with an intelligence officer, explained that the Russian special services had poisoned Alexei Navalni.
The authorities described the conversation as “forgery” but never denied that Navalni’s interlocutor was an agent.
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