Mediazona found that by February 2024, security forces had opened at least 15 criminal cases on the financing of extremism (Part 1 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code) due to donations to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). 14 accused were reported publicly, another case was told to Mediazona by a source familiar with the materials.
In June 2021, the Moscow City Court declared FBK an extremist organization; on August 4, this decision came into force. The next day, the fund launched new fundraising, Russians were offered to donate money through the “secure Stripe service.” However, it soon became clear that in some cases Stripe transferred information about the recipient to Russian banks.
Alexei Navalny’s associate Leonid Volkov told Mediazona that on August 5, Stripe “in a number of cases transmitted information” about the purpose of payments to banks, but then stopped, and this did not happen again. “They have such a mode, we were able to contact them and forcefully turn it on,” he added. Volkov previously said that FBK sent about eight thousand donations that day. The politician admits that the fund does not know “what proportion of those who donated on August 5 are in danger” and has no way of contacting them, but “there is a feeling that this still affected a very small number of people.”
Mediazona found that in at least 8 out of 15 cases, the defendants are being prosecuted for donations made on August 5, 2021. These are Andrei Zayakin, Alexey Konovalov, Sergei Shiryaev, Anton Siederer, Evgeniy Molotov and three other defendants who asked that their names not be indicated. In six cases, the date of the donation could not be reliably established; this concerns cases against Sergei Abramov, Andrei Kovalenko, Anton Kovrik, Alexey Kamkin, Ilya Startsev and Ravil Iskaliev.
In the case of Nizhny Novgorod activist Gleb Kalinichev, we are talking about a different date. A source familiar with the case told Mediazona that, according to investigators, Kalinychev made nine transfers to FBK in the amount of 1,899 rubles from a Sberbank card. The first transfer was on August 8, 2021, the last one on January 25, 2022. “Mediazona” was unable to familiarize itself with the case materials, however, according to the publication’s interlocutor, they do not contain formulations indicating a transfer to FBK. How the security forces identified Kalinichev is unclear, he added.
Three donors have already been sentenced. Last winter, Sergei Shiryaev and Alexey Konovalov were each fined 500 thousand rubles. In February of this year, Vyacheslav Hertsberg was ordered to pay 300 thousand rubles. The maximum penalty under the article on financing extremism is eight years in prison.
Read more in the text about prosecutions for connections with FBK.
If there were a person. Graffiti, donations, work in headquarters — and other pretexts for persecuting Navalny's supporters