Russian opposition leader Navalny on trial tomorrow

LEADING Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny will go on trial tomorrow on charges that could result in him being sent to prison for ten years.

He and former colleague Pyotr Ofitserov are accused of leading an organised criminal group that embezzled 16 million rubles (£330,000) worth of timber from a state-run company.

The charges not only threaten him with a long prison sentence, but strike at the heart of his image as an anti-corruption campaigner – an image that has made him the man president Vladimir Putin fears most.

Mr Navalny, 36, says the charges are a fabrication intended to silence him on the orders of Mr Putin, who has cracked down on dissent since returning for a third term last year.

“Everyone’s known for years that if Putin ever made the decision to shut me down, then he’ll shut me down,” Mr Navalny said yesterday.

His conviction appears all but certain. More than 99 per cent of Russian trials end with a guilty verdict, according to a study by the European University at St Petersburg.

The charges were filed by the Investigative Committee, an FBI-like body solely accountable to Mr Putin. Since his return to the presidency last May, the committee has become a highly politicised instrument at the front line of his crackdown on dissent.

In an interview on Friday in the newspaper Izvestia, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said officials would not have looked into a “banal theft” if not for Mr Navalny’s own investigations, which have implicated high-ranking officials in corruption. “If a person tries hard to attract attention, or, if I can put it, teases authorities – ‘look at me, I’m so good compared to everyone else’ – well, then one gets more interested in his past and the process of exposing him naturally gets faster,” Mr Markin said.

The trial, being held in Kirov, 500 miles from Moscow, stems from Mr Navalny’s role as an adviser to the governor of the region that includes Kirov.

Charges were first brought in May 2011, alleging that Mr Navalny had forced Vyacheslav Opalev, director of state-owned timber company Kirovles, to sign a contract that deprived the company of 1.3 million rubles.

Investigators dismissed those charges in April 2012, then re-opened the case less than two months later on the directive of Investigative Committee chairman Alexander Bastrykin. Mr Navalny was charged in July, shortly after Mr Bastrykin had publicly harangued investigators for closing the case and told them to show Mr Navalny “no mercy.”

The accused man said: “Putin created a system under which everyone is too frightened to take responsibility. He already gave the green light – get going and put them in jail – and they all started running around filing charges.”

The charges say Mr Navalny conspired with Mr Opalev to launder the timber through a holding company headed by co-defendant Mr Ofitserov, selling it for 16 million rubles less than it could have received without a middleman.

Mr Opalev pleaded guilty and was given a four-year suspended sentence in December.

That plea sharply limits Mr Navalny’s defence options, but he says he has commissioned three independent analyses that exonerate him.

The presiding judge, Sergei Blinov, has issued 130 guilty verdicts and no acquittals in the past two years, according to the pro-Navalny magazine the New Times.

The only intrigue in the trial, Mr Navalny says, will be whether he is jailed or given a suspended sentence to bar him from running for office.