Navalny Found Guilty on Charges of Fraud and Contempt of Court

Navalny has already been serving a two-and-a-half-year term for fraud in the 2014 Yves Rocher case.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been found guilty on charges of fraud and contempt of court.

The prosecutor insists that Navalny should be sentenced to 13 years at a strict penal colony and also fined 1.2 million rubles ($11,532).

The sentence will be announced later on Tuesday.

According to the prosecution, Navalny set up an organised group which comprised his associates Leonid Volkov, Roman Rubanov, and others to collect funds for the activities of his "Anti-Corruption Fund" (FBK*), as well as for his presidential campaign in 2018. However, instead of carrying out the activities of his non-governmental organisation in accordance with the law, Navalny spent the money (over 350 million rubles ($3.1 million) on extremist and personal needs, the prosecution added. The opposition figure has denied all the charges.

The other charge in the case concerns Navalny insulting Judge Vera Akimova, who sentenced him to a fine of 850,000 rubles ($7,500) for slandering a WWII veteran, Ignat Artemenko. The two offenses were investigated separately, but before being submitted to the court, they were combined into one case.

Alexei Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon his arrival in Russia from Germany, where he had been treated for alleged poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent. A Moscow court rescinded his suspended sentence in the 2014 Yves Rocher fraud case over multiple probation violations and sentenced him to two-and-a-half years in prison.

*FBK is banned in Russia as an extremist organisation.