Russian prosecutors on Monday ordered jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and its regional network to suspend all their activities, its director said.
A Moscow court on Monday had begun a preliminary hearing into designating FBK and its regional offices as “extremist” after prosecutors requested they be added to a list of “terrorist and extremist” organisations run by Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee. State prosecutors in Moscow have ordered campaign groups supporting Alexey Navalny to stop their activities, pending a request to outlaw them and the jailed Kremlin critic’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. The an injunction by the Moscow prosecutor’s office was posted on social media by Navalny’s allies. The move is part of the most recent crackdown on Navalny’s organisations earlier this month, the prosecutor’s office petitioned a court to label his Foundation for Fighting Corruption and network of regional offices as extremist groups.
Navalny’s foundation opened 10 years ago and has since targeted high-ranking Russian officials with exposes on corruption, many in the form of colorful and widely watched YouTube videos. One of the latest postings, which has received 116 million views alleges that a lavish palace on the Black Sea shore was built for Putin through an elaborate corruption scheme. The Kremlin has denied there are any links to Putin.
