The Lefortovo Court in Moscow sentenced opposition politician Alexei Navalny to nine years in prison on charges of fraud and insulting a judge. According to RosSMI, Navalny was also fined 1.2 million rubles.
A mobile court hearing was held in the penal colony in Pokrov, Vladimir region, where Navalny is serving his sentence.
Navalny was charged with two counts of Article 297 of the Criminal Code (paragraph 1, "Insulting participants of judicial proceedings" and paragraph 4, "Insulting a judge") and four counts of Article 159 of the Criminal Code ("Fraud on a particularly large scale").
In the case of insulting the judge the oppositionist was accused of showing disrespect to the participants of the trial during the hearing of the case of defamation of veteran Ignat Artemenko a year ago and, simultaneously, of fraud in collecting donations for the FBK anti-corruption activities.
On Tuesday, March 22, the court found the politician guilty on all charges. During the reading of the verdict, Judge Margarita Kotova stated that "the witnesses' testimony was confirmed by the data from the victims.
However, the court said that the testimony of prosecution witness Gorozhanko, who called the charges against Navalny "absurd," was "critical.
The indictment states that Navalny and his associates collected campaign donations by "deception and abuse of trust," but disposed of them "for personal purposes."
Only four of the 300,000 people who donated to Navalny's structures were recognized as victims.
In his last statement, Navalny called the case against him a fabricated one and said that he considered two of the victims to be fake and two to be obviously intimidated, as they themselves were criminal defendants.
He also spoke out against the war in Ukraine, blaming the Kremlin for unleashing it. He also added that he "will continue to fight the authorities" and is not afraid of "neither the FSB, nor chemical weapons, nor Putin."
As a reminder, in June, a Russian court ruled that Navalny's anti-corruption foundation was "extremist."
In August 2020, Navalny was taken to Germany for treatment after being poisoned in Siberia with the nerve agent Novichok.
The russian government denied any involvement in the poisoning and rejected the experts' findings, triggering a new wave of sanctions against russia. russia accuses the West of a smear campaign against it.
In January 2022, the European Union called on Moscow to immediately release Alexei Navalny.
