The Investigative Committee recognized four people as victims in the case of fraud against politician Alexei Navalny, including a tow truck driver from Moscow, father-in-law of a colleague of lawyer Ilya Remeslo and two entrepreneurs. This was told by an associate of the politician Ivan Zhdanov. Supporters of the oppositionist also published a decision to bring him as a defendant.
According to the investigation, the oppositionists Navalny, Leonid Volkov and Roman Rubanov in 2015 wanted to illegally enrich themselves by collecting donations to investigate the corruption of officials. As an «additional pretext» to collect donations in 2018, they decided to run a presidential campaign, even though, according to the ruling, Navalny was ineligible to stand in the elections due to a criminal record.
The oppositionists “planned to steal and dispose of the money they collected at their own discretion, including spending it on personal purposes, as well as on BUT "FBK", BUT «FZPG»«.
There are four victims in the case. One of them, Alexander Koshelev, a laborer from Moscow, watched videos about the investigation into Navalny’s poisoning in December 2021 and deposited 1,020,000 rubles to the Sberbank account number through the Sberbank cash desk. “In order to deposit cash into a branch like this for anyone, you need to know the account number. And Koshelev knew. Told the cashier by heart. Only here is the problem: our account number was not published anywhere. It simply was not in the public domain, ”Zhdanov emphasized.
The second victim was a pensioner from the Leningrad region Mikhail Kostenko. According to Zhdanov, Kostenko is the father-in-law of lawyer Suren Zoroyan, who has been working with lawyer Ilya Remeslo since 2012, who has repeatedly criticized Navalny and his team. The case file states that in August 2017, Kostenko watched a video about the son of Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov and transferred 50,100 rubles to Volkov's account through the cash desk of Sberbank. In November of the same year, Remeslo tweeted that he would file a fraud claim on behalf of the «former donor Kostenko».
Zhdanov called Koshelev and Kostenko «disguised victims who were asked to slander an innocent person for money.» The remaining two victims — entrepreneurs Vyacheslav Kuzin and Alexander Karnyukhin — sent donations to Navalny's team for several years. In total, Kuzin donated 957,820 rubles, Karnyukhin — 665,583 rubles. When trying to contact Kuzin by phone, he said that he was under arrest. “A criminal case was opened against Vyacheslav Kuzin himself for his past banking activities. He was in a pre-trial detention center, now he is under house arrest, ”explained Zhdanov.
Karnyukhin, according to the oppositionist, found himself in a similar position. “He [in 2011] had already been prosecuted for tax evasion. You can take such a case, blow the dust off it and send it back to court under a more serious article,” the oppositionist added.
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In June 2021, the Moscow City Court, at the suit of the prosecutor's office, recognized FBK and SFPG extremist organizations and banned their activities.