A correspondent for the news agency “Politics Today” visited a tavern where the cream of protest is discussing the future of Russia. And I found out what was bothering bohemia.
The father of nations Stalin, the leader of the proletariat Lenin, the “demon of revolution” Trotsky and the gravedigger of capitalism Marx look from the walls. Unlike the heroes of the films, Navalny’s elite circle is not going to hide in huts. Unlike the revolutionaries of the past, they come from wealthy families.
Meeting point
"Would you like to join? There is one place...” , advised a man with Navalny posters in the Rokossovsky Boulevard metro area and did not give the address of the blogger’s headquarters.
Bar near the China Town metro station.
A friend told the poster about the establishment. I wasn't there myself. It's difficult to get there. Only the “cool guys” gather there.
“Close to the internal workings of the headquarters”, - the volunteer warned.
The young man spoke spiritually about the upper circles that were inaccessible to him, unobtrusively demonstrating his Omega watches. The brand name shimmered in gold letters on the flaking dial.
How to get
It’s really not easy to get into an establishment in the capital. There are strict security guards at the entrance. People of two categories are allowed inside: those whose names are on the list, and those who undergo face control, also known as a dress code.
The Politics Today correspondent chose the third path. One of the girls, whose name was on the list of VIP guests, helped us into the bar. She introduced the journalist as her friend and led him along.
Inside
Complying with the dress code is a delicate matter, but not in this case. The main criterion at the entrance is the presence of the brand, not taste. Young people from wealthy families wear trendy clothes here.
The area is replete with familiar names from Dolche & Gabbana to Chanel. Out of embarrassment for one’s own appearance one has to, as they say, lower one’s eyes, but this does not help. The bar's regulars walk from table to table in Balenciaga (56,300 rubles) and Alexander Mqueen (82,300 rubles) sneakers, and the fair sex wear elegant pumps from Jimmy Choo (72,400 rubles) and Dior.
Prices
The next obstacle on the way to a “closed society” is the menu. The prices are not communist: cocktails are served in cut glasses for 500 rubles. On the non-alcoholic drinks page - espresso for 380 rubles.
However, the atmosphere itself is friendly. Noticing the correspondent’s confusion, the bartender decided to support him and treated him to coffee at the establishment’s expense. At a table nearby there was a bored interlocutor. Not from Navalny's elite headquarters. The headquarters itself meets in the “secret room”.
Chamber of Secrets
This is a separate room. It is also used for banquets or small celebrations. Bohemia from the opposition is not looking for reasons to celebrate. Behind closed doors, they are frequent guests.
Inside the room there are two tables, bookshelves with the works of Marx and Engels. The interior is decorated with a “Be Prepared” pennant, a pioneer bugle and a red canvas with a hammer and sickle on it. Most often, groups of 5 to 15 people come here.
Salt of the earth
Representatives of golden youth gather for meetings. First and second year students from wealthy families. Schoolchildren, no less spoiled with pocket money, sometimes follow them.
Meetings at “headquarters” resemble a party for adult children, rather than meetings of political activists. During the evening, one table can spend from 40 to 70 thousand rubles. They have no problems with money.
What are they talking about
“Young rebels” spend their evenings drinking expensive alcohol, the degree of which is increased by conversations about the “fate of Russia.”
“All conversations are very clumsy. Some complex bill? Why understand it if you can immediately say that our government is the worst in the world. Here Navalny keeps up with the next release on YouTube,”– the interlocutor told the journalist.
They talk about volunteers and Navalny’s most prominent activists who are detained on the streets. Sympathy for supporters and abstract plans for their “salvation” remain just words. Visitors prefer to watch rallies and other illegal events indirectly, from their feeds on social networks.
“Watching TV is not in fashion these days, reading books is too lazy, and I’m already stuck in my studies. They have to cover half the sessions from their pocket money, so they can buy a new Ipnone only a month after release, and not immediately. And watching videos on the Internet where they are directly addressed with an appeal about the “terrifying situation in the country” is very fashionable. For them, this is the ambiance of high society conversations. It’s great and not difficult at all,”– he explained.
Relationship with staff
The main thing that reveals the high position of parents is the lordly manners of their children. They are used to being waited on everywhere, the interlocutor says:
“Children of rich parents, who are covered from all sides, are just starting to go on strike. Against what is the question. They have everything. Perhaps this is where the problem lies. Melancholy eats away. Youth is romance, 20-year-old young people have always been, are and will be driven by revolutionary sentiments.”
The waiters do not share the views of the young people, but visitors are welcome - they don’t skimp.
“It is clear that they treat the Navalnovites condescendingly and even with a degree of hostility. The majors irritate them with their arrogance, idleness, and narrow-mindedness. Although still, they cannot help but rejoice at their visits. Such companies leave a lot of money, and if you’re lucky, even tea,”– he remarked.
The average tea in Moscow is 10 percent of the bill. What comes out of the table is five to seven thousand rubles.
End of the feast
Conversations about Russia's troubles continue until the morning, teenagers drink a lot. By morning, official cars come to pick them up, some call a personal driver, others leave in a luxury taxi. Sometimes Navalny's supporters are unable to leave the bar on their own and have to be carried out. The staff helps drivers with this. Experienced drivers leave waiters additional bonuses for silence.
“This is the key to the safety of families: the prodigal son disgraces his father, and his adventures remain behind the tightly closed doors of the bar. In the morning everyone forgets about it,”– the interlocutor stated.
Navalny’s last rally in greater Moscow was small. In the crowds where the correspondent watched the protest, there were ordinary guys. The most expensive shoes that met the eye were Vans sneakers for an eighth grader.
The teenagers did not understand what was happening around them and in the crush they injured each other. They were taken away from the rally by paddy wagons, also in some ways official vehicles.
On the morning of September 24, a service bus took away the spiritual leader of the “bar protest” from the doors of the special detention center. Alexei Navalny served 30 days of administrative arrest for repeated organization of an unauthorized event in January 2018 in the center of Moscow.
The blogger was taken to the Danilovsky police station, where he was charged with yet another uncoordinated protest. This will be discussed again at a meeting of Navalny’s “elite headquarters” today or tomorrow evening.
In which he accused State Duma Deputy Speaker Sergei Zheleznyak of “deceit” and “hypocrisy.” The blogger consistently cites the deputy’s statements about patriotism and illustrates them with photographs from the life of his daughters studying in elite educational institutions abroad.
Navalny begins by saying that there are several reasons to “hate” Zheleznyak: he is one of the initiators of the law on Internet censorship, he also has a legislative background on the law “on foreign agents,” and he is a co-author of amendments to the law on rallies.
Using the example of Zheleznyak, Navalny comes to the conclusion that United Russia members do not connect the future of their children with Russia. The deputy sent three of his four daughters to study abroad - to London and Switzerland.
The blogger is outraged that this fact does not prevent the deputy from making the following statements: “It is very important that value guidelines, love for the Motherland, and patriotism are formed from childhood and are an integral part of the process of educating and becoming a citizen”; or “You can’t be a patriot for several hours a day. If you are a citizen of your country, you must connect all your actions with it.”
Navalny posted the results of his investigation on his blog. The oppositionist refers to the official website of a Swiss school “for elite children”, where one of the deputy’s daughters, Ekaterina Zheleznyak, studies. Under the link, Alexey Navalny publishes a photo from the site, which depicts the students’ crafts. Under one of them there is a signature: “Ekaterina Zheleznyak.” The oppositionist also names the cost of schooling: 2.4 million rubles.
The deputy’s eldest daughter, Anastasia, writes Navalny, also studied at a Swiss school, after which she entered a university in London. Navalny publishes a screenshot of Anastasia’s page on the social network Facebook, where Queen Mary University of London is indicated in the “education” column. According to the oppositionist, studying at this university costs 630 thousand rubles per year.
Navalny’s third daughter Elizaveta did not escape Navalny’s attention either. He provided a link to the girl’s VKontakte page, where she publishes photographs with the caption “A few views of London and more.” The oppositionist also quotes Elizabeth’s post: “Hello, dear London! Goodbye good old Moscow! I will try to never give up and regret anything) Sincere thanks.”
Then the oppositionist moves on to the deputy himself, describing his property. “Judging by his declaration, he is the owner of a very beautiful, rare Chrysler Prowler car. The first concept Chrysler Prowler appeared at the New York Auto Show in 1993. The cars are assembled by hand. More than 11 thousand wealthy American collectors purchased this car for their collections. The latest and most unique Chrysler Prowler, specially created in a single copy for the public historical organization National Multiple Sclerosis Society, was sold at the New York branch of the world famous Christie's auction for $175,000. Patriotic!” — the oppositionist wrote, referring to his income statement.
According to Navalny, deputy Zheleznyak also owns a Lexus RX 350 worth 2.8 million rubles and two apartments with a total area of 437.6 square meters. m.
At the end of the recording, Alexey Navalny summarizes everything written, stating that Zheleznyak’s official income is 3.5 million rubles. According to the oppositionist, the deputy pays 4.3 million rubles annually for his daughters’ education.
Navalny reminds the deputy of the ban on Americans adopting Russian children, contained in the Russian response to the “Magnitsky list,” which Zheleznyak supported. “He himself sent three children abroad, but he will stand up as a barrier so that some unfortunate three-year-old autistic person, lying in dirty diapers and with prospects of only having a nursing home at the age of 18, is taken abroad,” the blogger is indignant.
A few hours later Sergei Zheleznyak commented on Navalny’s “compromising evidence” on his Facebook page.
Accusing the oppositionist of “pouring a bucket of slop on him and his children,” the deputy asks his opponent: “If you always feel like there is a stink around you, think about it, maybe you are the reason?”
“He and his team didn’t find anything illegal or obscene against me, so Alexey decided to engage in distortion and fraud with publicly available data,” is how Zheleznyak assessed Navalny’s research.
Next, the deputy unfolded evidence of the groundlessness of the reproaches addressed to him. He recalled that he came to the Duma from the position of managing director of the large company News Outdoor, where his work “paid quite decently,” and received a severance pay of several tens of millions of rubles, on which he paid taxes.
“Therefore, all of Alexei’s controversial and inaccurate fabrications, even if taken on faith, were within my means. Therefore, all the indignation about my property and funds for the education of my children is groundless. I was never a swindler or a thief and never got dirty with bribes and cuts,” Zheleznyak noted.
Before explaining why his children study abroad, he emphasized that “he has always advocated the development of modern education here in Russia, dialogue and cooperation with leading universities in the world, grants for talented children from families experiencing financial difficulties, allowing them to receive the right education where it is best given.”
Responding to accusations of hypocrisy, Zheleznyak said that it is necessary to “distinguish real patriotism from leavened patriotism.”
He doesn’t see anything unpatriotic about his daughters studying abroad. “They will get an education, come home and be useful to the country in the capacity in which they want,” Zheleznyak wrote.
United Russia expanded its understanding of patriotism: “Patriotism does not mean walking in bast shoes, weaving vines, listening only to the balalaika and buying, with tears in your eyes, low-quality goods produced in the neighborhood. True patriotism lies in realizing oneself in the country and for the good of the country. If there is a high-quality Russian product, and there are many of them, there is no need to buy a foreign analogue for budget funds!”
Zheleznyak noted that he is not afraid of being included in the “Magnitsky list.”
“I’m not eager to go there and I’m not shaking for foreign treasures. I’ve been to many countries in my life, everywhere there are a lot of problems, but we need to put things in order here, in our Motherland. No one will do this for us; it is naive to rely on overseas uncles; no one has canceled international competition. As for my daughters, if my right to enter the countries where they study is deprived, it will be unpleasant, but we will survive. They will return and complete their studies here,” the deputy concluded.
Summing up the current “information noise” raised by Navalny, Zheleznyak wished him that “no scumbag would ever use his children, trying to do him harm.”
Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny. Born on June 4, 1976 in the military town of Butyn, Odintsovo district (Moscow region). Russian political and public figure, lawyer, investment activist, former member of the board of directors of Aeroflot. Author of one of the highest-rated socio-political blogs on LiveJournal. Positions himself as a fighter against corruption in Russia.
Alexey Navalny was born on June 4, 1976 in the military town of Butyn, Odintsovo district, Moscow region.
Father - Anatoly Ivanovich Navalny, co-owner and general director of the Kobyakovskaya wicker weaving factory enterprise, was born and graduated from school in Zalesye (formerly Chernobyl district, now Ivankovsky district, Kiev region), after graduating from the Kiev Military School of Communications, he was appointed near Moscow.
Grandfather Ivan Tarasovich was a carpenter and, like his wife Tatyana Danilovna, he worked on the local collective farm almost all his life.
Mother - Lyudmila Ivanovna Navalnaya, co-owner and commercial director of the Kobyakovskaya wicker weaving factory, comes from a rural area near Zelenograd, Moscow region, studied at the Moscow Institute of Management named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze, worked as a laboratory assistant at the Zelenograd Research Institute of Microdevices, got married in 1975 for Anatoly Ivanovich, after graduating from the institute she worked as an economist, and since 1987 - deputy director for economics.
Navalny’s parents currently own the Kobyakovskaya wicker weaving factory in the Odintsovo district, where Alexey is the founder.
Brother - Oleg Anatolyevich Navalny, until May 2013 - Deputy Director of the Automated Sorting Centers company, a branch of Russian Post, First Deputy Director of the express delivery company EMS Russian Post.
Cousin - Marina Navalnaya.
According to A. Navalny, all his relatives lived in Ukraine, and until 1986 he himself spent every summer in the Kyiv region. But after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, some of the relatives moved to other regions of Ukraine.
He considers himself mostly Ukrainian due to “some kind of roots and genetics.” According to his uncle, more than half of Navalny’s relatives live in Zalesye and Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky.
In 1993, Navalny graduated from the Alabinsk secondary school in the military village of Kalininets in the vicinity of the village of Taraskovo near Moscow.
He studied well, however, he says, he constantly clashed with teachers - “because it didn’t fit my perception that a teacher automatically becomes an authority just because he is a teacher”.
He grew up as a cynic and anti-Soviet, a kind of juvenile dissident.
“As a child, I was a “Soviet” larva. It is in this formulation. “Sovka”, a person who despises Soviet power and tries to squeeze it out of himself, because already in early childhood, on a subconscious level, it seemed to me that with this country something is wrong. Well, as a larva, since it had not yet formed into clear contours and frames, it was at the level of childhood sensations... there was some oppressive oppression and pressure from the varnished officialdom, running counter to the observed reality... Since the early 80s, we have had a receiver broadcasting the Voice of America...", he says.
In 1997, he founded Nesna LLC, the main activity of the company was hairdressing services. For some time, Nesna handed over “zero” balances, and then was sold.
Registered LLC in 1997 "Allect". In 1998-2005, he served as Deputy Director for Legal Affairs in this company. During the 2007 Duma elections, the Allekt company was an advertising agent for the Union of Right Forces party. In total, SPS purchased advertising worth 99 million rubles through Allect, Navalny received a commission of 5% from this, that is, 5 million rubles.
In 1998-1999 he worked at the development company ST-group. Among other things, he dealt with currency control and antitrust legislation.
In 1998 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.
In 1999 he entered the Faculty of Finance and Credit of the Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation (specialty “Securities and Exchange Business”), from which he graduated in 2001.
In 2000, together with friends from the Faculty of Law of RUDN, he opened a company "N. N. Securities". Navalny was the owner of 35% of the shares of this company and served as its chief accountant. "N. N. Securities traded securities on the stock exchange, and as a result, the company went bankrupt. According to Navalny, while playing on the stock exchange, he lost “the little money” that he had.
The beginning of his political activity can be considered the year 2000, when Navalny joined the Russian United Democratic Party “Yabloko” and was a member of the Federal Political Council of this party. In 2002, he was elected to the regional council of the Moscow branch of the Yabloko party. From April 2004 to February 2007 - chief of staff of the Moscow regional branch of the Republican Democratic Party "Yabloko". During the period of party activity, he became friends with SPS functionaries Nikita Belykh and Maria Gaidar.
Alexei Navalny combined business and politics.
In 2001, Navalny co-founded Euro-Asian Transport Systems LLC. The company was engaged in logistics, making money from road freight transportation.
In 2006, he was the host of the “Urban Planning Chronicles” program on the “Echo of Moscow” radio station.
In 2007, Navalny co-founded the national democratic movement "People".
In 2008, the creation of the “Russian National Movement” was announced, which included the organizations DPNI, “Great Russia” and “People”.
According to the Vedomosti newspaper, in the spring of 2008, Navalny bought shares in Rosneft, Gazprom, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz, and Gazprom Neft for about 300 thousand rubles. After which he began to fight for his rights as a minority shareholder.
In 2009, Navalny established Navalny and Partners LLC, in 2010 this company was liquidated.
In 2009, Navalny passed the qualifying exam at the Bar Chamber of the Kirov Region.
In 2010, Navalny transferred to the Moscow City Bar Association. During his legal practice, he participated in 11 cases in arbitration courts, and only in two of them personally, and in other cases his representatives acted on his behalf.
He says about his studies at Yale that it was there that he decided to seriously take up the fight against corruption in Russia.
“In a nutshell, this is something like a very cool advanced training course for people from all over the world who have already achieved a lot in their profession, but are striving for new heights and expanding their circle of friends. So, Seryozha Guriev (Rector of the Russian economic school) and Oleg Tsyvinsky (professor of economics at Yale) were able, thanks to them for this, to “reach out” to me and insist that it would be nice for me to take these courses, especially in terms of international corporate law. Although in fact the program much broader, everything that wasn’t there, and whoever we met... By the way, it was at that time that we launched “Rospil”, we really took on state corruption, because the State Department is teaching Russians how save budget money...", Navalny said in an interview with Voice of America.
Alexei Navalny - interview with The New Times
On December 5, 2011, the day after the State Duma elections, Navalny spoke at a rally sanctioned by the authorities and held by the Solidarity movement on Chistoprudny Boulevard. The purpose of the rally was to express disagreement with the results of the elections and accuse the authorities of large-scale fraud. After the end of the event, he and several hundred other participants took part in an unauthorized march to the building of the Central Election Commission of Russia on Lubyanka, during which he was detained by the police and subsequently received 15 days of administrative arrest.
On May 9, 2012, he was again sentenced to 15 days of arrest for participating in an illegal public event that took place early in the morning of that day on Kudrinskaya Square.
In February 2012, the National Reserve Bank (NRB) of Alexander Lebedev (owns 15% of Aeroflot) nominated Navalny as a candidate for the board of directors of Aeroflot. Navalny agreed to become director, saying that if elected, he would focus on corporate governance and anti-corruption efforts.
On June 25, 2012, Navalny joined the board of directors of Aeroflot. according to the decision of the annual meeting of shareholders. 787 million votes were cast for Navalny, which, with a total number of votes of 12.1 billion, is 6.5% (votes of the NRB and a number of other minority shareholders). Navalny became a member of the Personnel and Remuneration Committee of the Aeroflot Board of Directors. In February 2013, it was reported that Navalny was not nominated as a candidate for the new Aeroflot board of directors.
On December 14, 2012, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a criminal case against Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg Navalny for committing crimes under Part 4 of Art. 159, pp. “a”, “b” part 2 art. 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud committed by an organized group on an especially large scale and the laundering of funds acquired as a result of the commission of a crime by a group of persons by prior conspiracy and using their official position).
According to investigators, Navalny created the company Main Subscription Agency LLC, with which in the spring of 2008 an unnamed trading company entered into an agreement for cargo transportation of mail. According to the investigation, the agreement was concluded with the participation of Oleg Navalny, who at that time worked as the head of the Department of Domestic Postal Dispatch of the FSUE Russian Post branch - Automated Sorting Centers, who convinced the company's managers to conclude an agreement at a deliberately inflated cost. At the same time, the “Main Subscription Agency” did not have its own material base for carrying out transportation, and in fact it was handled by another company, which was managed by an acquaintance of Oleg Navalny.
Later it became known that a criminal case against the brothers Alexei and Oleg Navalny was initiated at the request of the head of the Russian division of the cosmetics company Yves Rocher, Bruno Leproux. His application addressed to the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, was received by the Investigative Committee on December 10, and on the same day the materials of the criminal case were submitted to separate proceedings.
According to the RF IC, a total of 55 million rubles were transferred to the account of the “Main Subscription Agency”, with the real cost of services being 31 million rubles. Most of this amount, according to investigators, was spent by the Navalny brothers on their own needs, and more than 19 million rubles were legalized by the Navalnys by concluding fictitious agreements with the Kobyakovskaya wicker weaving factory, the founders of which were, among other things, the Navalny brothers themselves.
Alexei Navalny with his brother Oleg
On December 30, 2014, the court announced the operative part of the verdict: Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 3.5 years in a general regime colony, Alexei Navalny was given a suspended sentence of 3.5 years. The brothers must pay more than 4 million rubles to the MPK company, in addition, each of them was sentenced to a fine of 500 thousand rubles.
On April 4, 2013, on the air of the Dzyadko-3 program on the Dozhd TV channel, Alexei Navalny said that in the future he plans to take the post of President of Russia. With this step, he “wants to change life in the country” and ensure that the residents of Russia, a country rich in natural resources, do not live “in poverty and hopeless squalor,” but live “normally, like in European countries.”
In 2013, in the early elections for the mayor of Moscow, he was nominated as a candidate from the RPR-Parnas party.
On March 20, 2014, during the Crimean crisis, The New York Times published an article by Navalny in which he asked for additional sanctions against “Putin’s inner circle.” In particular, Navalny called on Western countries to freeze financial assets and confiscate the property of large Russian businessmen. Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation has prepared an expanded list of persons for sanctions by the European Union. This document was published on the website of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
In January 2015, Alexei Navalny in his blog accused the senator and head of the Anti-Maidan movement Dmitry Sablin of owning undeclared real estate. In November 2015, Dmitry Sablin and his wife filed a lawsuit against Navalny for the protection of honor and dignity, demanding compensation for moral damages in the amount of 5 million rubles each. The reason for the lawsuit was, however, not the January FBK investigation, but Navalny’s post of June 12, where, in particular, he called “Anti-Maidan” a movement “in defense of the property of Senator Sablin, obtained as a result of bribes and fraud, thanks to his marriage to the daughter of the governor who stole billions from the budget of the Moscow region." The court found Alexei Navalny guilty and ordered him to pay Dmitry Sablin 408 thousand rubles.
On February 20, 2015, Navalny was subjected to administrative arrest for 15 days for unauthorized campaigning in the metro.
On October 8, 2015, Alexei Navalny’s right to travel abroad was restricted due to the fact that he did not repay a debt of 4.5 million rubles in due time. The representative of the Federal Bailiff Service of Russia in Moscow, Timur Korobitsyn, said that “in the Office of the Federal Bailiff Service in Moscow, enforcement proceedings are underway to collect joint and several debts from Alexey and Oleg Navalny in the amount of more than 4 million 490 thousand rubles in favor of Multidisciplinary Processing Company LLC.”
In December 2015, Alexey Navalny paid fines under the claim of the Multidisciplinary Processing Company and, according to him, enforcement proceedings against him were terminated.
On December 1, 2015, Alexei Navalny posted a documentary film and longread online "Gull", dedicated to the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s investigation into the activities of the sons and colleagues of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika. In particular, the authors of the investigation claim that the Deputy Prosecutor General is connected with the Tsapka gang from the village of Kushchevskaya, the eldest son of Yuri Chaika, Artem, made his fortune from the raider takeover of enterprises, and the younger, Igor, from illegally obtained government contracts. The film received a special prize at the Artdocfest documentary film festival in December 2015.
The film's budget was 250,000 rubles, and brought in donations worth 3.5 million rubles to the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
On December 7, 2015, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, said that the film did not arouse interest in the Kremlin, since it is not about the prosecutor general, but about his adult sons.
At the beginning of 2016, Switzerland considered the complaint of Alexei Navalny against Artyom Chaika. On December 8, 2015, the Anti-Corruption Foundation sent a corresponding complaint to the Swiss Prosecutor General's Office that Artem Chaika and other individuals have been laundering money in Switzerland for at least ten years. An audit conducted by the supervisory authority did not find any evidence of money laundering that would be associated with the name of Artyom Chaika. In addition to Chaika, the complaint also listed other persons in respect of whom an investigation was also carried out. To avoid bias in the investigation, the prosecutor's office assigned the investigation to a special police unit in Lugano, Canton Ticino, that investigates white-collar crime.
Ruslan Shumakov (Artyom Chaika’s lawyer) conveyed information to the RBC newspaper that Artyom Chaika received a notice from the Swiss prosecutor’s office that there were no claims against him. Ruslan Shumakov additionally conveyed information that Artyom Chaika, based on his own request, received from Greek officials confirmation of the legality of the transactions he carried out in Greece (purchase of a hotel on the island of Chalkidiki).
On February 8, 2017, the Leninsky District Court of Kirov re-sentenced Navalny and Ofitserov to 5 and 4 years of suspended imprisonment. Navalny noted that the court’s verdict verbatim repeats the old one handed down in 2013. On March 3, an appeal was filed against the verdict in the Kirov Regional Court. At the meeting on March 15, 2017, the court did not consider the complaint on the merits, but returned the case to the district court to eliminate procedural violations. At the next hearing, which took place on May 3, the court confirmed the earlier verdict. Navalny's defense reaffirmed their intention to appeal the verdict to the ECHR.
On March 2, 2017, FBK published an investigative film “He’s not your Dimon” about the alleged assets of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The narrator of the film is Navalny, who claims that Medvedev heads a multi-level corruption scheme, owning multi-billion dollar real estate acquired through charitable foundations and organizations, legally registered in the name of proxies, with money from oligarchs and loans from Gazprombank.
According to Navalny, said in the video, his investigation took more than one month. A spokeswoman for the Russian Prime Minister, Natalya Timakova, said that it is “pointless” to comment on Navalny’s investigation, since it represents a “propaganda attack” by the oppositionist. Medvedev himself at first did not comment on the FBK investigation and on March 10 blocked Navalny on Instagram.
Navalny called on his supporters to go to rallies on March 26, 2017. Protests took place in 82 Russian cities, some of which attracted several thousand people. After the rallies, Medvedev described Navalny as a “convicted character” and called the FBK investigation “nonsense”, filmed for “big money” not from “the people”, but from “private sponsors.”
Speaking in the State Duma on April 19, 2017, Medvedev refused to comment on the investigation, calling it “absolutely false products of political crooks.”
In its turn, entrepreneur Alisher Usmanov filed a lawsuit against Navalny and FBK in April 2017, and on May 18 of the same year he recorded a video message to Navalny, in which he harshly criticized him, noting that he felt “the terrible envy of a loser and a failed businessman who started his business with kickbacks on small transactions,” and also rejected the accusations against him, emphasizing, that Navalny’s attempts “to slander me are a pug barking at an elephant.”
On May 24, 2017, Usmanov, in response to Navalny’s challenge to come to the debate, where he promised his opponent to give an answer to all charges, recorded a second video message, where he noted that he “was expecting an apology, not a debate,” instead of which “he heard from him more accusations, lies, cheap populism.”
Usmanov compared Navalny with the character of M. A. Bulgakov’s story “Heart of a Dog” Polygraph Poligrafovich Sharikov, “who dreamed of taking away and dividing everything” and expressed the opinion that Navalny is his “worthy successor.” In addition, he pointed out that “if Sharikov is a stupid and uneducated demagogue,” then Navalny is “not just a demagogue, but also a highly artistic liar” and stated that when Navalny’s lies are documented, he begins to get scared and declare that he threaten. Usmanov refused the debate, believing that it was a “debate between truth and lies” and summed up that all “the debate will be in court,” where Navalny, whom Usmanov called “Alexey Poligrafovich Navalny,” will “explain the difference between truth and lies.”
On May 31, 2017, the Lyublinsky District Court of Moscow fully satisfied Usmanov’s claim against Navalny and ordered the defendant “to delete videos and publications posted at the specified addresses within 10 days and publish a refutation for a period of at least 3 months at these addresses.” Thus, the court ordered the removal of the film from YouTube, as well as the removal of the website where the investigation was posted and the removal and refutation of the post stating that Usmanov gave a bribe to Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, and information about censorship in the Kommersant publishing house, controlled by Usmanov.
Alexei Navalny - Mind Games
Director of the Foundation for Effective Policy Gleb Pavlovsky expressed the opinion that Navalny’s goal is to create a “political project” with the formation of a certain “electoral sector” with the aim of its further transfer, under certain conditions, to one of the opposition parties or movements. Pavlovsky believes that the idea of creating such a social-populist project was taken from the West, comparing, in particular, Navalny’s activities with the Tea Movement in the USA.
According to the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov, expressed regarding the mayoral elections in Moscow in 2013, “Navalny sat with Saakashvili on the same bench, trained in America on how to fool Russian citizens.”
Alexei Navalny's height: 188 centimeters.
Personal life of Alexei Navalny:
In 1999, while on vacation in Turkey, Alexey met his future wife Yulia (Yulia Borisovna Navalnaya, maiden name Abrosimova). The holiday romance ended with a wedding.
Alexei Navalny with his wife Yulia
The couple has two children: daughter Daria (born in 2001) and son Zakhar (born in 2008).
Alexei Navalny with his family
The couple say that at home there is a complete delineation of spheres of influence: Julia supports her husband’s political views, but does not give advice on work, and he does not interfere in the household and raising children.
Navalny’s family lives in the Maryino district of Moscow region in an ordinary panel house in an “economy class” apartment with an area of about 80 square meters.
Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny- a public figure, politician, positions himself as an investment activist involved in investigations of corruption in Russia, the creator of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and the author of a popular blog on LiveJournal. In 2013, Alexei Navalny lost to Sergei Sobyanin in the Moscow mayoral elections. In December 2016, he announced that he was going to participate in the 2018 Russian presidential elections, building his election campaign on the same corruption investigations like the film about Dmitry Medvedev “He’s Not Your Dimon.”
The early years and education of Alexei Navalny
Alexey Navalny was born on June 4, 1976 in the military town of Butyn, Odintsovo district, Moscow region.
As Alexey Anatolyevich himself likes to tell, his family comes from Ukraine. Most of the relatives live in the Kyiv region and Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky. He himself feels partly Ukrainian.
Navalny's father Anatoly Ivanovich Navalny, was born and graduated from school in Zalesye (formerly Chernobyl district, now Ivankovsky district, Kiev region). Navalny Sr. graduated from the Kiev Military School of Communications. After graduating from college, he began serving in the Moscow region.
Navalny's mother - Lyudmila Ivanovna Navalnaya, originally from Zelenograd, Moscow region, studied at the Moscow Institute of Management named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze, worked as a laboratory assistant at the Zelenograd Research Institute of Microdevices. Currently, Navalny Alexey’s parents are co-owners of the Kobyakovskaya wicker weaving factory.
Grandfather - Ivan Tarasovich Navalny was a carpenter. Alexey's grandmother - Tatyana Danilovna. The old people worked all their lives on the local collective farm in Zalesye. Little Alyosha spent every summer until 1986 (before the Chernobyl accident) in their village.
As the son of a career military man, Alexey changed several schools. In this regard, he confidently asserted that “military children do not have childhood friends, because military children move around all the time.”
Navalny’s idol both in childhood and to this day - Arnold Schwarzenegger. Perhaps Alexey learned to fight from his hero, because he said that at school only high school students could defeat him.
After graduating from Alabinsk secondary school in 1993, Alexei Navalny entered the law faculty of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, from which he graduated in 1998. In 1999 he entered the Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation (specialty “Securities and Exchange Business”) and graduated in 2001.
Work and business of Alexei Navalny
While still at university, Alexei Navalny began his business career. In 1997, an enterprising young man founded Nesna LLC (hairdressing services). True, Alexey soon sold the company. But in the same year, Navalny registered Allekt LLC. Navalny worked as deputy director for legal issues in this company, and at the same time got a job in the development company ST-Group. He worked on real estate issues, currency control and antitrust legislation (1998−1999). For some time he worked at Aeroflot Bank. While working in business structures, Alexei Navalny encountered both violations of the law and corruption.
Alexey Navalny has a share in the family business Kobyakovskaya Wicker Factory LLC (in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region). He has 25% of the authorized capital, the remaining shares are owned by his relatives.
Entrepreneurship flowed from the young Navalny. Together with friends from the Faculty of Law of RUDN University, Alexey opened the company “N. N. Securities". Alexey Navalny had a 35% stake in this company and worked as its chief accountant. "N. N. Securities was engaged in trading securities on the stock exchange. The young entrepreneur himself said that he became interested in playing on the stock exchange. Irrepressible passion led to the fact that Alexey Navalny lost (as he said) “the little money” that he had, and the company went bankrupt.
In 2001, the cheerful Alexey Anatolyevich co-founded Euro-Asian Transport Systems LLC, which made money from cargo transportation.
Politics and social activities of Alexei Navalny
Back in 2000, Alexey became a member of the Yabloko party and even its Federal Political Council. And from 2004 to 2007 he became the head of the regional branch of the Yabloko Republican Democratic Party. But in December 2007 he was expelled from the party with the wording “for causing political damage to the party, in particular, for nationalist activities.”
Alexey Navalny in the Yabloko party (Photo: navalny.com)
Since 2006, Alexey Navalny has been the founder of various projects and public organizations, such as “Political Debates”, “Union of Minority Shareholders”, “Committee for the Protection of Muscovites”, “Police with the People”. Together with Maria Gaidar And Natalia Morar organized the Youth Movement “YES!” He increased his recognition by being the host of the Urban Chronicles program on the Ekho Moskvy radio station, and was also the editor-in-chief of the Fight Club program on TVC.
In 2009, Alexey Navalny, as a freelance adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, worked with the former leader of the Union of Right Forces Nikita Belykh, subsequently arrested on charges of corruption (receiving a bribe on an especially large scale).
Alexey Anatolyevich became interested in the Yale University program (“Yale World Fellows”). Every year, about fifteen gifted people from different countries are selected through this program. Garry Kasparov, Evgenia Albats, Sergey Guriev And Oleg Tsyvinsky, considering Navalny Alexey very promising for studying global problems of international understanding, gave him a recommendation. In 2010, Alexey completed the required six-month course. According to the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov, “Mr. Navalny is a political “product” manufactured in US laboratories for the next pogrom of Russia.”
In 2013, Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny competed with Sergei Sobyanin in the elections for the mayor of Moscow. Took second place. At the same time, Alexey headed the Central Council of the political association “Party of Progress”.
Moscow mayoral candidate A. Navalny met with voters (Photo: Mikhail Metzel/TASS)
And finally, Alexei Navalny took the presidential path in 2016. On the Dozhd TV channel, he announced his participation in the Russian presidential elections, which will take place in 2018.
On December 25, 2017, the Central Election Commission refused to register Alexei Navalny due to his lack of passive voting rights due to an outstanding conviction for a serious crime. In turn, the oppositionist threatened the authorities with a voter strike and an appeal to the Constitutional Court, SP previously wrote. However, the 2018 elections took place without Navalny.
Alexey Navalny and the fight against corruption in Russia
Alexei Navalny's political activities rely on the fight against corruption in the country. Since 2008, he has been immersed in investigations of what he believes are corruption cases. He exposed violations in various funds, published articles about the investigation of corruption cases in Russia. In his blog, which Navalny maintains on LiveJournal, he discusses and gives advice on how to effectively fight corruption. According to media reports, in 2008, Alexey Anatolyevich acquired shares in almost all large Russian companies, then, as a minority shareholder, he accused the top management of the companies of numerous abuses; by filing lawsuits, Navalny tried to increase the transparency of the companies’ activities.
In 2010, Alexey Navalny created the non-profit public project RosPil, with the help of which he fought elements of corruption in public procurement. As part of the project, site users reported corruption, experts conducted assessments, and project lawyers wrote complaints to regulatory authorities, demanding the abolition of corrupt purchases.
Realizing that the fight against corruption works well in politics and responds to public demand, Alexei Navalny continued his investigations. In 2011, Navalny created the non-profit organization Anti-Corruption Foundation, which united previous anti-corruption projects. The Anti-Corruption Foundation includes coordinators of Navalny’s projects “RosPil”, “RosYama”, “RosVybory”, “Good Machine of Truth”, “RosZhKH”.
An important part of the activities of the Anti-Corruption Foundation has become documentaries dedicated to investigations of the Navalny Foundation. In December 2015, Alexey Navalny posted the film “Chaika” on the Internet, in which the Anti-Corruption Foundation shared its investigation into the activities of the sons and colleagues of Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika. The film aroused great interest and received a special prize at the Artdocfest festival that same month. Yuri Chaika called Navalny's investigation ordered and deceitful. The Swiss Prosecutor General's Office, responding to a complaint from the Anti-Corruption Foundation, did not find any evidence of corruption in relation to Artem Chaika.
Navalny’s second high-profile film was “ He's not Dimon for you", released in March 2017. The film by the Anti-Corruption Foundation says that the Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev allegedly owns multi-billion dollar real estate, heads a multi-level corruption scheme using charitable foundations and various organizations. Navalny's film about Medvedev also attracted great interest, gaining more than 2.5 million views on YouTube in the first 24 hours alone. Prime Minister's Press Secretary Natalya Timakova called Navalny’s film a propaganda attack, and Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the FBK investigation, noted that “these are not the first examples of the creativity of this famous convicted citizen.”
At the same time, a group of deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation proposed that the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption conduct a check of the information from the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Alexey Navalny in the FBK office (Photo: fbk.info)
It was under the pretext of a lack of reaction to the investigation of Navalny’s foundation that Alexey Anatolyevich managed to bring many people to rallies at the end of March in a number of Russian cities. On March 26 in Moscow, according to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 7,000-8,000 people gathered on Tverskaya Street. According to media reports, about 1,000 activists were detained, including Navalny himself, who was then fined 20 thousand rubles for organizing an unauthorized mass rally in the center of the capital and arrested for 15 days under Art. 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO RF) for disobedience to a lawful order of a police officer.
Criminal cases of Alexei Navalny
Navalny acted as a witness in a number of criminal, administrative, civil and arbitration cases. But he is also an accused and defendant, for example, in the famous “Kirovles Case”. Alexey Navalny was accused of being an adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, in May-September 2009, in collusion with the director of the Vyatka Forestry Company, Pyotr Ofitserov, and the general director of Kirovles, Vyacheslav Opalev, who organized the theft of more than 10 thousand cubic meters of timber worth over 16 million rubles . Alexey Anatolyevich was sentenced in 2013 by the Kirov Regional Court to 5 years, later the term was replaced by a suspended sentence. In 2016, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned this verdict “taking into account the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which found a violation of the right to a fair trial in the investigation documents.” On February 8, 2017, the Leninsky District Court of Kirov re-sentenced Navalny and his partner Pyotr Ofitserov to 5 and 4 years of suspended imprisonment.
On June 15, the Kirovles company filed a claim with the court to recover 16 million rubles in compensation from Alexei Navalny, Pyotr Ofitserov and Vyacheslav Opalev in the case of theft of funds. In July, the Nikulinsky Court of Moscow made a decision according to which they must pay the Kirovles company 2.1 million rubles. Thus, the court satisfied Kirovles’ claim against Navalny only partially.
Alexey and Oleg Navalny, accused of embezzlement from the Yves Rocher cosmetics company (Photo: Artem Korotaev/TASS)
In the Yves Rocher case, Alexei Navalny was accused along with his brother Oleg. The company accused the Navalnys of fraud and money laundering. On December 30, 2014, Navalny was again sentenced to 3.5 years probation.
In May 2017, the news that the famous businessman Alisher Usmanov filed a lawsuit against FBK for the protection of honor and dignity caused a great stir. In addition, in a special video message, Usmanov responded to accusations against him from Alexei Navalny; in the first 24 hours alone, the video was watched by over 6 million people on all social networks. In his second address, Usmanov again criticized his opponent, comparing Navalny to Bulgakov’s hero Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov.
On May 15, 2018, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow sentenced Navalny to 30 days of arrest for disobeying the police at a protest rally that took place on May 5 in Moscow and was not coordinated with the authorities.
In June 2018, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow extended the probationary period of opposition politician Alexei Navalny in the Kirovles case for another year, obliging him to report to the Federal Penitentiary Service four times a month.
"SP" reported that on the morning of October 14, Navalny was released after 50 days of arrest.
On October 15, Alexey Navalny announced that he had become a defendant in a criminal case initiated under Article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: “Slander combined with accusing a person of committing a serious or especially serious crime.”
According to him, the plaintiff in this case is an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Pavel Karpov, from whom the Anti-Corruption Foundation, headed by Navalny, discovered “elite real estate, luxury cars, etc., and in quantities that are not even accessible to an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the highest salary."
"Duel" with Zolotov
After Alexei Navalny published an investigation on his website entitled “Rosgvardia Potatoes,” which alleged that the Russian Guard was purchasing food at inflated prices, the head of the Russian Guard, Viktor Zolotov, recorded a video message in response to Navalny’s accusations. The head of the Russian Guard challenged the politician to a duel and promised to turn him into a chop in just a few minutes. General Zolotov also called Navalny “an opposition pug, an American test tube product, a clone and a puppet.” According to Zolotov, the politician has been given the task of throwing mud at everyone in order to destabilize the situation in the country.
On October 18, Free Press reported that Alexei Navalny responded to the challenge of the head of the Russian Guard, Zolotov, to a duel, reserving the right to choose the weapon and place of the fight.
“I accept your challenge, and, as expected, I choose a place and a weapon. Our duel will take place in the form of debates live on Channel One or any other federal channel,” he said on his YouTube channel.
Viktor Zolotov, in turn, recalled that he invited Navalny not to a debate, but to a competition of a different kind, but promised to answer the oppositionist, although he does not yet know in what format
Political views of Alexei Navalny
Alexei Navalny positions himself as a national democrat. At the same time, he denies the label of nationalist that has been attached to him. Although Alexey Anatolyevich previously noted that nationalism “should become the core of the political system of Russia,” he was a participant in the nationalist “Russian March” marches, and spoke out against migrants who go to Russia with their “very unique values.”
In his election program, Navalny Alexey continues to focus on government corruption and the fight against bureaucracy. The first point of his program is the introduction of a large one-time tax for oligarchs, which will compensate for the injustice of privatization. He also proposes complete exemption from taxes, regulation and reporting for individual entrepreneurs, radical de-bureaucratization of housing construction, which will reduce housing prices, and other things that tempt the voter.
Alexey Navalny with his wife and children (Photo: navalny.com)
Family of Alexei Navalny
Alexei Navalny is married to Yulia Borisovna Navalnaya(Abrosimova). Has a daughter, Daria (2001), and a son, Zakhar (2008).
Brother - Oleg Anatolyevich Navalny. He worked as Deputy Director of the Automated Sorting Centers company until May 2013, a branch of Russian Post, First Deputy Director of the EMS Russian Post Express Delivery campaign.
As befits a politician, Alexei Navalny is very active on social networks, posting his photos on Instagram, retweeting on Twitter, and posting on Facebook. Navalny does not miss the chance to promote himself, so in August he responded to a request from one of the portals, which announced an award among users for a video with a politician. As a result, Alexei Navalny and his wife filmed a video of a walk around the city and sent it to journalists. According to the politician, he was paid only 10 thousand rubles, as reported in the news. Alexey Navalny said that he was waiting for the remaining amount, otherwise he would go to court. And the politician promised to transfer the money received to his election fund.
Navalny doesn’t always succeed in PR, so a photo posted on Instagram at the end of August in which Alexey enthusiastically eats noodles with the caption “I love doshik” caused a wave of parodies and photoshopped images on the Internet. The phrase “Navalny eats doshirak” has become a meme, the politician’s photo is attached to a variety of historical characters, however, it is not clear whether such a stir is beneficial to the oppositionist himself.
Alexey Navalny is a well-known Russian public and political figure leading a public fight against corruption. He is considered a symbol of the Russian non-systemic opposition. He is the author of the highest-rated political blog on LiveJournal and the head of the RosPil project, aimed at combating abuses in public procurement. The biography of Alexei Navalny is full of scandals and criminal cases in which he was the main defendant in major thefts and fraud. The attitude of the population towards the activist and oppositionist Navalny is ambiguous - some consider him a brilliant fighter for truth and justice, others, on the contrary, see him as an ordinary populist who, with his expressed attitude against government agencies and political parties, is trying to deceive the people.
early years
Navalny Alexey Anatolyevich was born on June 4, 1976 in the military town of Butyn, located in the Moscow region. His parents, Anatoly Ivanovich and Lyudmila Ivanovna, were ordinary people who, at the time of democratic changes, managed to become businessmen, owners of the Kobyakovsky wicker weaving factory. According to Alexey himself, his ancestry is closely connected with Ukraine, since it was in this country that a significant part of his relatives lived. In the future, voters and users of social networks will more than once ask Alexey Anatolyevich about his position on Ukraine, asking for his opinion on the events that occurred in the neighboring state at the end of 2013 - beginning of 2014. In his blog on LiveJournal, Navalny will present in detail his own conclusions and vision changes in Kyiv.
The future non-system oppositionist spent his school years in the military village of Kalininets, where he graduated from high school in 1993, after which he moved to the Russian capital. In Moscow, Navalny immediately entered the Peoples' Friendship University at the Faculty of Law. In 1998, having received a law degree, the young lawyer decided to expand his professional base, and to accomplish this task he became a student at the Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation. Simultaneously with his studies in finance and credit, Alexey worked as a lawyer at Aeroflot Bank and the development company ST Group.
Having received a diploma in financier, Navalny did not stop there and completed a 6-month course of study at Yale University under the Yale World Fellows grant program, where he managed to get on the recommendations of Sergei Guriev and Evgenia Albats, “venerable” Russian oppositionists, whose opinion was then very much listened in America.
Career and business
Alexei Navalny’s working career started back in his student years, but was exclusively business-oriented. Over the course of several years, he became the founder of a dozen enterprises with “zero” income, which he sold very successfully after a short period of activity. This fact already interested critics who suspected the future oppositionist of fraud and organizing fraud.
In 2008, Alexei Navalny began to become interested in “investment activism” and began buying small stakes in the companies Transneft, Surgutneft, Gazpromneft, Rosneft, VTB and Sberbank. Having become a full shareholder, he began to demand the publication of information about the activities of the management of these structures, on which the income of shareholders depended. Then he called the Gazprom company his main opponent and was even able to get a criminal case initiated against one of the managers of a large corporation.
Along with the business, the income from which allowed the young lawyer to live comfortably, Navalny was actively involved in political activities.
Policy
His start in politics was the democratic party "Yabloko", in which he held leading positions until 2007, thanks to the support of his associates, and.
After being expelled from Yabloko, Navalny co-founded the national democratic movement “People” and became an active participant in the radical “Russian March” march.
In 2009, Alexey Navalny was elected as a freelance adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, Nikita Belykh, and headed the non-profit organization “Initiative Support Fund” of the head of the Kirov regional state administration.
Alexey Navalny often criticizes not only current officials, but also those who were already in leading positions in the public administration system. In particular, television viewers remembered the discussion between the oppositionist and the reformer of the 90s on the “Direct Conversation” program, hosted by. In the studio of the Dozhd TV channel, questions were raised not only about the activities of the state corporation Rusnano, whose general director is Chubais, but also in general the problems of financing this company and Russian science were discussed.
Gradually, Alexey Anatolyevich becomes one of the leaders of the opposition in Russia, and after the murder, it was Navalny who was considered the main critic of the authorities within the country. Navalny himself blames the Russian top leadership for the murder of his political ally and friend. According to him, there was a “terrorist attack that did not achieve its goal.”
Moscow mayoral elections
Soon his plans included the goal of becoming the mayor of Moscow, and in 2013 he was registered with the Moscow City Election Commission as a candidate, but he failed to win the elections - Alexei Navalny received 27% of the votes, which did not give him the right to take the high post of the capital's mayor.
The election results, of course, did not satisfy the headquarters of the non-systemic oppositionist, and the very next day after their announcement he organized a rally in Moscow on Chistoprudny Boulevard in order to demonstrate disagreement with the announced voting results. After the rally, he led an unauthorized march to the Central Election Commission of Russia, during which he was detained by police and received 15 days of administrative arrest.
At that time, he had already created his own anti-corruption Internet projects “RosPil”, “RosYama” and “RosVybory”, and also registered the “Anti-Corruption Foundation”, which, in his opinion, should have created the image of an uncompromising anti-corruption official for him and made him a positive hero in the eyes of the population. But Navalny was unable to achieve this status for a long time, as many criminal cases involving his participation began to come to light.
Arrest and criminal cases
The criminal prosecution of Alexei Navalny started in 2011, when he was convicted of crime, namely causing property damage by deception. Based on the results of the investigation, the well-known non-system oppositionist was sentenced to 5 years in prison in 2013, but the day after the verdict, Alexey Anatolyevich was released on his own recognizance. Then both Russians and international society condemned Navalny’s sentence, considering it politically motivated. Even the Russian president expressed his attitude towards the verdict, calling it “strange.” After reviewing the case, the court changed the punishment and changed it to a suspended sentence.
Navalny’s second high-profile criminal case was the trial of the Yves Rocher company, in which he, along with his brother Oleg, was accused of large-scale theft and money laundering of a French company. As a result, the court sentenced Alexey Anatolyevich to 3.5 years probation, and his brother received a real sentence of the same amount. The brothers-accomplices were also fined 4.8 million rubles.
The Kirovles case is another high-profile criminal proceeding against Navalny. The consideration of the case on the facts of possible damage to the Kirov state enterprise “Kirovles” will drag on for years.
Despite this, Navalny remains a leader for many Russians, especially Muscovites. Many consider the figure to be a people's political leader, and his activities are called useful for Russian society and the economy. In 2012, according to Time magazine, he became the only Russian to be included in the TOP 100 most influential people in the world.
Navalny Foundation
In 2011, Alexey Navalny created the non-profit organization “Fund for Fighting Corruption”, which would later become a very large-scale structure in Russia. The new structural formation unites all of Navalny’s projects, and the public figure himself refuses various kinds of anonymous donations.
The founders of the new fund were able to gain enormous experience in public and transparent fundraising by organizing financing for the RosPil project. Using the Yandex.Money payment system, the fund attracts a significant amount of funds to ensure normal functioning. In addition, professional lawyers and economists are also actively involved in the work of the organization, who carefully try to identify illegal schemes in the public procurement system.
The management of the fund has taken a detailed approach to developing a strategy for its actions in various areas, and the main task of the structure is to organize local situations in which the state apparatus will feel pressure from the public. According to the creators, such a unit can become a real alternative to the current public administration system. The founders of the foundation themselves have repeatedly argued that the activities of such a structure cannot be considered an attack on the Russian state itself, because participants in the process of forming a system of power are interested in the stability and durability of all branches of the state apparatus, and total pressure on officials will contribute to positive internal transformations throughout the country.
Alexey Navalny in the office of the Anti-Corruption Foundation The issue of financing the fund has always been of interest not only to government officials, but also to other prominent public figures, as well as ordinary citizens. According to the leaders of the organization, a transparent system for raising funds was created, within which it was possible to use $300 thousand for the annual budget. Navalny himself has repeatedly argued that initially the fund needed mass support, because it is the receipt of funds from completely different categories of citizens that allows us to confirm the honesty and openness of the organization.
It was the financing of the structure that interested ordinary Russians the most. Who is behind him? Soon, many Russian voters began asking a similar question, trying to find out more about Navalny's activities. In Russia itself, representatives of some political forces openly call Alexey an “American spy,” and the foundation is accused of attracting funds from abroad.
The Investigative Committee conducted a search at the office of the Anti-Corruption Foundation The foundation will soon present several investigative films. One of the first films that caused a public outcry in Russia was the investigative documentary film “The Seagull.” The filmmakers presented a new investigation into the business and criminal connections of the sons of the Russian Prosecutor General. Other anti-corruption revelations followed.
Navalny himself also fueled interest in the fund’s activities with his publications on the microblogging service Twitter. In particular, one of the posts that the asset manager of the Deputy Prime Minister purchased an entire floor in one of the elite high-rise buildings caused a storm of indignation among members of the public. The oppositionist demanded an investigation into this matter.
Alexey Navalny now
In March 2017, unauthorized rallies took place in many regions of the Russian Federation. Thousands of citizens who gathered in the squares of the country's major cities demanded an investigation into corruption in the highest echelons of power.
The reason for mass protests was a film by the Navalny Foundation about the property of the Russian Prime Minister. Many Russians were clearly shocked by the information provided by the investigation, which revealed that one of the country's top officials is the owner of a “secret empire” that was created through complex corruption schemes. According to Navalny, Medvedev allegedly manages huge funds and assets, and the official’s inner circle controls the flow of funds into the accounts of organizations. It is assumed that tens of billions of rubles were consistently transferred to the accounts of such structures. Such incriminating evidence excited the Russian public.
Some deputies also supported the citizens' indignation. In particular, representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation demanded the creation of an investigative commission that could conduct a transparent investigation and also check all materials.
Navalny commented on his desire to participate in the elections with the desire of people who, he believes, are already massively supporting his anti-corruption program. According to the opposition figure, he is obliged to participate in the elections because he carries political representation for these people.
Navalny’s political career was not without incidents. On March 19, 2017, at one of the protests, which was organized against an increase in tariffs for housing and communal services, the politician was pelted with eggs in Novosibirsk. Still, this did not stop the oppositionist from meeting people and listening to their problems.
Personal life
The personal life of Alexei Navalny is not particularly remarkable against the backdrop of his scandalous career. In 1999, while on vacation in Turkey, he met his future wife Julia, a holiday romance with whom ended in marriage. For 15 years now, she has been creating a reliable home base for him and putting up with all the “side effects” of her husband’s political activities.
Navalny's friends and associates believe that he has a strong and wonderful family, in which they are raising two children - Daria and Zakhar. The spouses themselves say that at home there is a complete delineation of spheres of influence: Julia supports her husband’s political views, but does not give advice on work, and he does not interfere in the household and raising children.
Navalny’s family lives in the Maryino district of Moscow region in an ordinary panel house in an “economy class” apartment with an area of about 80 square meters. Also, the Russian oppositionist owns Hyundai and VAZ-21083 cars, and his wife owns a Ford car. According to official data, Navalny’s income in 2012 amounted to 9 million rubles, which became known during his election campaign for the post of mayor of Moscow.
A remarkable fact is that Alexei Navalny’s height is 189 centimeters. This allows us to classify the political and public figure as one of the highest representatives of Russian politics.