Kremlin critic jailed for embezzlement
Source: Agencies |
July 19, 2013, Friday
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ALEXEI Navalny, one of the Russian opposition's leading figures, was convicted of embezzlement yesterday and sentenced to five years in jail.
The Kremlin critic claimed the case was politically driven to try to silence him.
He was found guilty of heading a group that embezzled 16 million rubles (US$500,000) worth of timber from state-owned company Kirovles in 2009, while working as an unpaid adviser to the provincial governor in Kirov, 760 kilometers east of Moscow.
The 37-year-old lawyer played with his phone for much of the verdict. A post on his Twitter account after the sentence said, "Oh, well. Don't get bored without me. And, importantly, don't be idle ..."
Co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov received a four-year sentence.
Navalny was a top leader of the wave of massive protest rallies that broke out in late 2011 after a national parliamentary election scarred by allegations of fraud.
More recently, he declared himself a candidate for this fall's Moscow mayoral election.
The head of his campaign, Leonid Volkov, said a decision on whether to pull out of the race would be made after consulting with Navalny, reported the ITAR-Tass news agency.
The Kremlin critic claimed the case was politically driven to try to silence him.
He was found guilty of heading a group that embezzled 16 million rubles (US$500,000) worth of timber from state-owned company Kirovles in 2009, while working as an unpaid adviser to the provincial governor in Kirov, 760 kilometers east of Moscow.
The 37-year-old lawyer played with his phone for much of the verdict. A post on his Twitter account after the sentence said, "Oh, well. Don't get bored without me. And, importantly, don't be idle ..."
Co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov received a four-year sentence.
Navalny was a top leader of the wave of massive protest rallies that broke out in late 2011 after a national parliamentary election scarred by allegations of fraud.
More recently, he declared himself a candidate for this fall's Moscow mayoral election.
The head of his campaign, Leonid Volkov, said a decision on whether to pull out of the race would be made after consulting with Navalny, reported the ITAR-Tass news agency.
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