Courcy’s Intelligence Brief
The Kremlin's remorseless pressure works on Lebedev
Just as Russian prosecutors have announced new fraud charges against anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader Aleksey Navalnyy, it appears that another target of Kremlin bile, Alexander Lebedev, is succumbing to the pressure.
The new fraud charges against Navalnyy and his brother Oleg were announced on 14 December, on the eve of an opposition protest raly in central Moscow. Navalnyy is also the subject of an earlier charge filed in July. Informed sources say both charges are a fairly transparent attempt to cow a troublesome opponent. The two cases both involve charges that could entail maximum jail terms of 10 years.
The charges of fraud are related to a contract to provide postal delivery services on behalf of a foreign-owned company. Prosecutors allege that the Navalnyy brothers defrauded their foreign counterparts by subcontracting the delivery work and overcharging for it. They allege that there was a fraud because Navalnyy's firm did not provide the services itself. And they accuse the brothers of laundering part of the proceeds through a factory owned by their parents.
Navalnyy’s response has been to say that the Russian Investigations Committee had become “an instrument of political policing” which fabricates cases “in such a way that even people who are not particularly fond of me throw up their hands in despair and say: this is taking things to their limit”.
Navalnyy remains confident that continuing protests will lead to early elections, saying: “I am working with the aim of this to happen sooner rather than later.” He also said that he had no intention of immigrating under the pressure from the Kremlin.
Media tycoon Alexander Lebedev, does seem to be bending to the pressure, judging by his 14 December announcement that he is to end his funding of Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s most vociferous opposition newspapers. The announcement comes as he faces trial for “aggravated hooliganism” for attacking a businessman on a TV show in 2011.
Lebedev has said that he is ending his funding because the paper can now be self-financing, but Russian media watchers say this is impossible. In 2010, Lebedev subsidised the paper with over $3m and he did so again in 2011. The level of his funding in 2012 is not known, but the commercial facts haven’t changed – and advertising revenue is very hard to come by for anti-Kremlin papers.
In another sign that Lebedev is bending to Kremlin pressure, he has said that his National Reserve Bank will not now be issuing an anti-corruption credit card in partnership with Navalnyy’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption. He made a statement saying that Navalynyy’s anti-corruption efforts were no longer as effective as they had been, and he has said that the widely derided anti-corruption campaign inspired by the Kremlin is working. Lebedev’s trial, on charges that could entail up to seven years in jail, is due to begin in the new year.