ALEXEI NAVALNY WINDS UP AN ANTI-CORRUPTION FOUNDATION

Alexei Navalny announced his intention to wind up the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation). The politician did this on his blog, along with the text indicating that the alarm was not a “training alarm”. The reason for the liquidation of the Foundation was the lost lawsuit, filed against the politician by the "Moscow Schoolboy" company.

The court ordered Navalny, the ACF’s lawyer Lyubov Sobol and the organization itself to pay 29.2 million rubles each to the affected company. Since it turned out to be a problem to raise 88 million, it was decided to close one organization in order to then open another.

We should recall that the reason for the appeal of "Moscow Schoolboy" LLC to the court was a video posted on the Internet. The aim of the video was to tell about the food poisoning of children attending kindergartens and schools with the low-quality products.  

The representatives of ACF named the company "Moscow schoolboy" and businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who, according to the creators of the video, is associated with the company, involved in this poisoning.

However, many experts suggest that the “Moscow Schoolboy” case, in respect of which the court demanded a refutation and the removal of the ill-fated video, represents only the tip of the iceberg that has sunk the Foundation.

In fact, Navalny's company has many arguments for self-liquidation. First, the ACF was recognized as a foreign agent. This happened after a payment in the amount of 140 thousand rubles had been transferred to the organization's bank account. The director of the Foundation, Ivan Zhdanov, received about 3 thousand rubles more from the USA. The company’s management did not return the funds received. For this reason, recognition as a foreign agent turned out to be a completely predictable court decision.

The second serious blow to the activities of the ACF was the criminal case initiated by the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation against the employees of the Foundation.

Initially, it was about billions of dollars, although later the investigators limited themselves to the amount of 75 million rubles. According to the investigation, the Foundation's employees have been receiving illegally transferred funds from various persons over three years (2016-2018).

As a result, the non-profit foundation, which emerged 9 years ago, turned out to be easier to close than to try to fight for, given all the problems associated with it. The representatives of the Foundation, including Navalny himself, have already reported that they have registered a new organization, the Fund for the Defense of Rights. It was created a year ago, in May 2019. Now the main task of the opposition leader Navalny is to try to drag people who have previously actively supported the ACF to the new fund.