The Lefortovo Court has received a criminal case against politician Alexei Navalny for contempt of court and donation fraud. It is reported by RIA Novosti with reference to the press service of the court.
“The criminal case has been registered, the start date for its consideration has not yet been set,” the court said.
The case card published on the court’s website refers to two episodes of Article 297 of the Criminal Code (part 1, insulting the participants in the trial, and part 4, insulting the judge) and four episodes of part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code (large-scale fraud).
Navalny's lawyer Olga Mikhailova told Mediazona that the politician is charged with insulting judge Vera Akimova, prosecutor Yekaterina Frolova, and the grandson of veteran Igor Kolesnikov, who was a witness in a libel case. On June 2, 2020, in a tweet, Navalny called the heroes of the RT video in support of amendments to the Constitution «traitors» and thus, according to the investigation, slandered the veteran Ignat Artemenko, who was among them. In this case, the politician was fined 850 thousand rubles.
«Don't worry, I'll be released no later than the spring of 2051.» A guide to Navalny's criminal cases
At the end of January, Mikhailova told Mediazona that the investigation had charged the politician in a joint case of contempt of court and fraud.
“Purely logically, this is, of course, strange, but in fact the Code of Criminal Procedure allows the investigator to do this if necessary. Now we are finishing reviewing [the materials] and somewhere in late January or early February they will be handed over to the court,” she said.
Navalny was detained in January 2021 when he returned to Moscow from Germany. There he was recovering from an assassination attempt with the Novichok poisoning agent. According to investigators, a group of FSB officers was involved in the assassination attempt.
On February 2, the policy was replaced with a suspended sentence for a real one in the Yves Rocher case, now he is in a colony in the Vladimir region. After the arrest, several more criminal cases were opened against Navalny.
“It turns out that now there are four cases against me. Two — up to 10 years each. On the third — up to 3 years. On the fourth — arrest up to 6 months. If they add up without offset, then 23 years. They can, of course, come up with something else, but still, the maximum term for the total number of sentences is no more than 30 years. So do not worry, I will be released no later than the spring of 2051,” he said.
Updated at 14:07. Mikhailova's comment has been added.