Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/world/europe/aleksei-navalny-charged-with-embezzlement.html
July 31, 2012
Russian Prosecutors Charge Protest Movement Leader
By ELLEN BARRY [Russia] [former USSR] [democratization and rule of law in Russia] [Vlad and his proclivities represent a lot of Russians who don’t care for the way the world has changed since 1991] [Russia has had a series of incidents since it began returning as a world power that causes embarrassment in Russia] [use psci350] [use ir text] [from submarines to rockets to special delivery crafts that cannot dock with the space stations] [meanwhile, the Kremlin continues its hardline—and typically heavy-handed—approach toward middle-class protestors from last December] [followup] [*]
MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors charged the blogger and anticorruption activist Aleksei Navalny on Tuesday with embezzlement, a statute that carries a sentence of five to 10 years in prison, the Kremlin’s most direct measure to date against a leader of the protest movement that erupted here in December.
The State Investigative Committee accused Mr. Navalny of organizing a scheme to steal timber from a state-owned company called KirovLes when he was acting as an unpaid adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, resulting in losses of just under $500,000 to the regional budget. Mr. Navalny was released on his own recognizance but signed a promise not to leave Moscow while the charges are pending.
The charge marks a threshold for President Vladimir V. Putin, who for 12 years as paramount leader has refrained from criminal prosecutions of activist leaders, sidelining them with softer methods like short-term detentions and limited access to television. The charges on Tuesday suggest that the Kremlin’s eagerness to limit Mr. Navalny’s impact now outweighs the risk of a political backlash.
As he emerged from the hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Navalny called the charges “absurd and very strange.” He compared the accusations to the case against Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the oil magnate and Putin rival who has been in prison since 2003 on tax evasion charges.
“All these jokes that Khodorkovsky stole all the oil and Navalny stole all the timber, that basically reflects what has happened today,” Mr. Navalny said. “As far as I can tell, the single idea behind this is that people watching the news on the first channel can hear on the news that Navalny stole 16 million rubles.”
The KirovLes deal, which dates back to 2009, was the basis of a previous criminal charge against Mr. Navalny, which was closed by investigators in the Volga region earlier this year. Mr. Navalny received documents informing him that he was no longer under suspicion and that his legal expenses would be reimbursed.
A statement on Tuesday from the investigative committee, the main federal investigative authority, said the embezzlement case was opened after the files from the earlier case were transferred to Moscow, and augmented by “financial analysis and investigative materials, which confirm Mr. Navalny’s participation in the execution of a crime.”
Mr. Navalny said he believed the case had been revived in the wake of an unexpectedly large demonstration on May 6, on the eve of Mr. Putin’s inauguration, that culminated in clashes between riot police and members of the crowd. Last week, he accused Russia’s chief federal investigator, Aleksandr I. Bastrykin, of secretly owning real estate and other investments in Europe.
He said the Kremlin was calculating that the protest movement was weakening and testing the waters with a series of actions against participants, like continuing arrests of participants in the May 6 march.
The 16th such indictment took place on Friday when investigators identified a university student who they said had wrestled other protesters from the hands of security forces and resisted the police.
“They are doing it to watch the reaction of the protest movement and of Western public opinion,” Mr. Navalny said. “So far they consider both of these things acceptable and so they are continuing along this line.”
Anna Tikhomirova contributed reporting from Moscow.