Recovering in Berlin since his poisoning in August, the opponent is accused of having used private donations for his benefit.
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If there was any doubt, here it is: Alexeï Navalny, who has repeatedly confirmed his intention to return to Russia, is not welcome there. Tuesday, December 29, the Russian justice announced the opening of a criminal investigation against the opponent, recovering in Berlin since his poisoning.
The case, opened by the powerful Investigation Committee, deals with “large-scale fraud”, a crime punishable by ten years in prison.
Seeing Mr. Navalny prosecuted in his country is nothing extraordinary – the opponent has accumulated , since his beginnings in politics, dozens of criminal and civil cases. But this is a first since his departure from Russia on August 22, two days after his discomfort aboard a plane on a Tomsk-Moscow flight and a plunge into a coma. In theory, it allows his arrest as soon as he returns to Russian soil.
On Monday, the prison administration had publicly threatened to transform an old sentence with a suspended sentence into a real sentence if he did not respond. , the next day, to a summons. No action was taken.
Navalny denounces Putin’s “hysteria”
The facts described by the Investigation Committee in this new case are simple. Mr. Navalny, who owes a large part of his political career to the investigations in which he denounces the corruption of the Russian elites, is accused of having used for his profit part of the donations collected by his Fund against Corruption and other organizations .
Out of 588 million rubles (6.5 million euros) collected from individuals, Alexeï Navalny would have used 356 million (4 million euros) to “acquire personal and material goods, as well as for the payment of expenses, including holidays abroad “. Such accusations had been made by the public media for many years.
Mr. Navalny reacted immediately, attributing this latest development to “hysteria” which would have gripped Mr. Putin at the idea of seeing him return to Russia. “I had warned that they would try to imprison me, because I am not dead, because I denounced my killers and proved that Putin was behind them,” he wrote.