Alexei Navalny

2011 parliamentary election and protests

In December 2011, after parliamentary elections and accusations of electoral fraud, approximately 6,000 people gathered in Moscow to protest the contested result, and an estimated 300 people were arrested, including Navalny. Navalny was arrested on 5 December. After a period of uncertainty for his supporters, Navalny appeared in court and was sentenced to a maximum of 15 days "for defying a government official". Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow radio station, called the arrest "a political mistake: jailing Navalny transforms him from an online leader into an offline one". After his arrest, his blog became available in English. Navalny was kept in the same prison as several other activists, including Ilya Yashin and Sergei Udaltsov, the unofficial leader of the Vanguard of Red Youth, a radical Russian communist youth group. Udaltsov went on a hunger strike to protest against the conditions.

Upon his release on 20 December 2011, Navalny called on Russians to unite against Putin, who Navalny said would try to claim victory in the presidential election, which was held on 4 March 2012.

After his release, Navalny informed reporters that it would be senseless for him to run in the presidential elections because the Kremlin would not allow the elections to be fair, but if free elections were held, he would "be ready" to run. On 24 December, he helped lead a demonstration, estimated at 50,000 people, which was much larger than the previous post-election demonstration. Speaking to the crowd, he said, "I see enough people to take the Kremlin right now".

In March 2012, after Putin was elected president, Navalny helped lead an anti-Putin rally in Moscow's Pushkinskaya Square, attended by between 14,000 and 20,000 people. After the rally, Navalny was detained by authorities for several hours, and then released. On 8 May 2012, the day after Putin was inaugurated, Navalny and Udaltsov were arrested after an anti-Putin rally at Clean Ponds, and were each given 15-day jail sentences. Amnesty International designated the two men prisoners of conscience. On 11 June, Moscow prosecutors conducted a 12-hour search of Navalny's home, office, and the apartment of one of his relatives. Soon afterwards, some of Navalny's personal emails were posted online by a pro-government blogger.

New party

On 26 June 2012, it was announced that Navalny's comrades would establish a new political party based on e-democracy; Navalny declared he did not plan to participate in this project at the moment. On 31 July, they filed a document to register an organising committee of a future party named "The People's Alliance". The party identified itself as centrist; one of the then-current leaders of the party, and Navalny's ally Vladimir Ashurkov, explained this was intended to help the party get a large share of voters. Navalny said the concept of political parties was "outdated", and added his participation would make maintaining the party more difficult. However, he "blessed" the party and discussed its maintenance with its leaders. They, in turn, stated they wanted to eventually see Navalny as a member of the party. On 15 December 2012 Navalny expressed his support of the party, saying, "The People's Alliance is my party", but again refused to join it, citing the criminal cases against him.

On 10 April 2013, the party filed documents for the official registration of the party. On 30 April, the registration of the party was suspended. On 5 July 2013 the party was declined registration; according to Izvestia, not all founders of the party were present during the congress, even though the papers contained their signatures. Navalny reacted to that with a tweet saying, "A salvo of all guns." Following the mayoral election, on 15 September 2013, Navalny declared he would join and, possibly, head the party. On 17 November 2013 Navalny was elected as the leader of the party.

On 8 January 2014, Navalny's party filed documents for registration for the second time. On 20 January, registration of the party was suspended; according to Russian laws, no two parties can share a name. On 8 February 2014, Navalny's party changed its name to "Progress Party". On 25 February 2014, the party was registered, and at this point, had six months to register regional branches in at least half of the federal subjects of Russia. On 26 September 2014, the party declared it had registered 43 regional branches.

An unnamed source of Izvestia in the ministry said registrations completed after the six-month term would not be taken into consideration, adding, "Yes, trials are taking place in some regions... they cannot register new branches in other regions during the trials, because the main term is over". Navalny's blog countered, "Our answer is simple. A six-month term for registration has been legally prolonged ad interim prosecution of appeals of denials and registration suspensions".

On 1 February 2015, the party held a convention, where Navalny stated the party was preparing for the 2016 elections, declaring the party would maintain its activity across Russia, saying, "We are unabashed to work in remote lands where the opposition does not work. We can even [work] in Crimea". The candidates the party would appoint were to be chosen via primary elections; however, he added, the party's candidates may be removed from elections. On 17 April 2015, the party initiated a coalition of democratic parties. On 28 April 2015, the party was deprived of registration by the Ministry of Justice, which stated the party had not registered the required number of regional branches within six months after the official registration. Krainev claimed that the party could be eliminated only by the Supreme Court, and he added that not all trials of registration of regional branches were over, calling the verdict "illegal twice". He added that the party would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, and expressed confidence that the party would be restored and admitted to elections. The next day, the party officially challenged the verdict.

2013 Moscow mayoral candidacy

On 30 May 2013, Sergey Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, argued an elected mayor is an advantage for the city compared to an appointed one, and on 4 June, he announced he would meet President Vladimir Putin and ask him for a snap election, mentioning the Muscovites would agree the governor elections should take place in the city of Moscow and the surrounding Moscow Oblast simultaneously. On 6 June, the request was granted, and the next day, the Moscow City Duma appointed the election on 8 September, the national voting day.

On 3 June, Navalny announced he would run for the post. To become an official candidate, he would need either seventy thousand signatures of Muscovites or to be pegged for the office by a registered party, and then to collect 110 signatures of municipal deputies from 110 different subdivisions (three-quarters of Moscow's 146). Navalny chose to be pegged by a party, RPR–PARNAS.

Among the six candidates who were officially registered as such, only two (Sobyanin and Communist Ivan Melnikov) were able to collect the required number of the signatures themselves, and the other four were given a number of signatures by the Council of Municipal Formations, following a recommendation by Sobyanin, to overcome the requirement (Navalny accepted 49 signatures, and other candidates accepted 70, 70, and 82).

On 17 July, Navalny was registered as one of the six candidates for the Moscow mayoral election. On 18 July, he was sentenced to a five-year prison term for the embezzlement and fraud charges that were declared in 2012. Several hours after his sentencing, he pulled out of the race and called for a boycott of the election. Later that day, the prosecution office requested that Navalny be freed on bail and released from travel restrictions, since the verdict had not yet taken legal effect, saying that he had previously followed the restrictions. Navalny was a mayoral candidate, and imprisonment would thus not comply with the rule for equal access to the electorate. On his return to Moscow after being freed, pending an appeal, he vowed to stay in the race. The Washington Post has speculated that his release was ordered by the Kremlin in order to make the election and Sobyanin appear more legitimate.

Navalny's campaign was successful in fundraising: out of 103.4 million rubles ($3.25 million as of the election day), the total size of his electoral fund, 97.3 million ($3.06 million) were transferred by individuals throughout Russia; such an amount is unprecedented in Russia. It achieved a high profile through an unprecedentedly large campaign organisation that involved around 20,000 volunteers who passed out leaflets and hung banners, in addition to conducting several campaign rallies a day around the city; they were the main driving force for the campaign. The New Yorker described the resulted campaign as "a miracle", along with Navalny's release on 19 July, the fundraising campaign, and the personality of Navalny himself. The campaign received very little television coverage and did not utilise billboards. Thanks to Navalny's strong campaign (and Sobyanin's weak one), his result grew over time, weakening Sobyanin's, and in the end of the campaign, he declared the runoff election (to be conducted if none of the candidates receives at least 50% of votes) was "a hair's breadth away".

The largest sociological research organisations predicted that Sobyanin would win the election, scoring 58% to 64% of the vote; they expected Navalny to receive 15–20% of the vote, and the turnout was to be 45–52%. (Levada Center was the only one not to have made any predictions; the data it had on 28 August was similar to that of other organisations.) The final results of the voting showed Navalny received 27% of the vote, more than candidates appointed by the parties that received second, third, fourth, and fifth highest results during the 2011 parliamentary elections, altogether. Navalny fared better in the center and southwest of Moscow, which have higher income and education levels. Sobyanin received 51% of the vote, winning the election. The turnout was 32%. The organisations explained the differences were because Sobyanin's electorate did not vote, as they felt that their candidate was guaranteed to win. Navalny's campaign office predicted Sobyanin would score 49–51%, and Navalny would get 24–26% of votes.

Many experts said the election had been fair, that the number of irregularities had been much lower than those of other elections held within the country, and that the irregularities had had little effect on the result. Dmitri Abyzalov, leading expert of Center of Political Conjuncture, added low turnout figures provide a further sign of fairness of the election, because that shows they were not overestimated. However, according to Andrei Buzin, co-chairman of the GOLOS Association, State Departments of Social Security added people who did not originally want to vote to lists of those who would vote at home, with the number of such voters being 5% of those who voted, and added this did cause questions if Sobyanin would score 50% if this did not take place. Dmitry Oreshkin, leader of the "People's election commission" project (who did a separate counting based on the data from election observers; their result for Sobyanin was 50%), said now that the runoff election was only 2% away, all details would be looked at very closely, and added it was impossible to prove "anything" juridically.

On 9 September, the day following the election, Navalny publicly denounced the tally, saying, "We do not recognise the results. They are fake". Sobyanin's office rejected an offer of a vote recount. On 12 September, Navalny addressed the Moscow City Court to overturn the result of the poll; the court rejected the assertion. Navalny then challenged the decision in the Supreme Court of Russia, but the court ruled that the election results were legitimate.

RPR-PARNAS and democratic coalition

Following the mayoral election, Navalny was offered a position as the fourth co-chairman of RPR-PARNAS. On 14 November 2014, the two remaining RPR-PARNAS co-chairmen, Boris Nemtsov and former Prime Minister of Russia Mikhail Kasyanov, declared it was the right moment to create a wide coalition of political forces, who favour the "European choice"; Navalny's Progress Party was seen as one of the potential participants. However, on 27 February 2015, Nemtsov was shot dead. Prior to his assassination, Nemtsov worked on a project of a coalition, in which Navalny and Khodorkovsky would become co-chairmen of RPR-PARNAS. Navalny declared merging parties would invoke bureaucratic difficulties and question the legitimacy of party's right to participate in federal elections without signatures collecting. However, Nemtsov's murder accelerated the work, and on 17 April, Navalny declared a wide discussion had taken place among Progress Party, RPR-PARNAS, and other closely aligned parties, which resulted in an agreement of formation of a new electoral bloc between the two leaders. Soon thereafter, it was signed by four other parties and supported by Khodorkovsky's Open Russia foundation. Electoral blocs are not present within the current law system of Russia, so it would be realised via means of a single party, RPR-PARNAS, which is not only eligible for participation in statewide elections, but is also currently not required to collect citizens' signatures for the right to participate in the State Duma elections scheduled for September 2016, due to the regional parliament mandate previously taken by Nemtsov. The candidates RPR-PARNAS would appoint were to be chosen via primary elections.

On 5 July 2015, Kasyanov was elected as the only leader of RPR-PARNAS, and the party was renamed to just PARNAS. He added he would like to eventually re-establish the institution of co-chairmanship, adding, "Neither Alexei Navalny nor Mikhail Khodorkovsky will enter our party today and be elected as co-chairmen. But in the future, I think, such time will come". On 7 July, in an interview released by TV Rain, he specified Navalny could not leave a party of his, and this would need to be completed by PARNAS adsorbing members of the Progress Party and other parties of the coalition, and Navalny would be to come at some point when he "grows into this and feels this could be done" and join the party as well.

The coalition claimed to have collected enough citizens' signatures for registration in the four regions it originally aimed for. However, in one region, the coalition would declare some signatures and personal data have been altered by malevolent collectors; signatures in the other regions have been rejected by regional election commissions. In Novosibirsk Oblast, some election office staff went on a hunger strike, which was abandoned almost two weeks since its inception, when Khodorkovsky, Navalny, and Kasyanov publicly advised to do so. Сomplaints have been issued to the Central Election Commission of Russia, after which the coalition has been registered as a participant in a regional election in one of the three contested regions, Kostroma Oblast. According to a source of Gazeta.ru "close to the Kremlin", the presidential administration saw coalition's chances as very low, yet was wary, but the restoration in one region occurred so PARNAS could "score a consolation goal". According to the official election results, the coalition scored 2% of votes, not enough to overcome the 5% threshold; the party admitted the election was lost.

2018 presidential election

With growing popular support Navalny announced his entry into the presidential race on 13 December 2016, however on 8 February 2017, the Leninsky district court of Kirov repeated its sentence of 2013 (after the case has been sent to a new trial with a different judge by the Supreme Court which annulled the initial sentence after the decision of ECHR, which ruled that Russia had violated Navalny's right to a fair trial, in the Kirovles case) and re-sentenced him with a five-year suspended sentence. This sentence, if it came into force and remained valid, might prohibit the future official registration of Navalny as a candidate. Navalny announced that he would pursue the annulment of the sentence that clearly contradicts the decision of ECHR. Moreover, Navalny announced that his presidential campaign would proceed independently of cour

Anti-corruption investigations

In 2008, Navalny sought to become an activist shareholder in five Russian oil and gas companies (Rosneft, Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, and Surgutneftegas), investing 300,000 rubles with the ultimate goal of increasing the transparency of their financial assets. Such transparency is required by law, but there are allegations that high-level managers of these companies are involved in theft and resisting transparency.

In November 2010, Navalny published confidential documents about Transneft's auditing. According to Navalny's blog, about US$4 billion were stolen by Transneft's leaders during the construction of the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline. In December, Navalny announced the launch of the RosPil project, which seeks to bring to light corrupt practices in the government procurement process. The project takes advantage of existing procurement regulation that requires all government requests for tender to be posted online. Information about winning bids must be posted online as well. The name RosPil is a pun on the slang term "распил" (literally "sawing"), implying the embezzlement of state funds.

In May 2011, Navalny launched RosYama (literally "Russian Hole"), a project that allowed individuals to report potholes and track government responses to complaints. In August, Navalny published papers related to a scandalous real estate deal between the Hungarian and Russian governments. According to the papers, Hungary sold a former embassy building in Moscow for US$21 million to an offshore company of Viktor Vekselberg, who immediately resold it to the Russian government for US$116 million. The property's real value was estimated at US$52 million. Irregularities in the paper trail implied collusion. Three Hungarian officials responsible for the deal were detained in February 2011.

Navalny was founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).

In February 2012, Navalny concluded that Russian federal money going to Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechen Interior Ministry was being spent "in a totally shadowy and fraudulent way." In May, Navalny accused Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov of corruption, stating that companies owned by Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov had transferred tens of millions of dollars to Shuvalov's company, allowing Shuvalov to share in the profit from Usmanov's purchase of the British steel company Corus. Navalny posted scans of documents to his blog showing the money transfers. Usmanov and Shuvalov stated the documents Navalny had posted were legitimate, but that the transaction had not violated Russian law. "I unswervingly followed the rules and principles of conflict of interest," said Shuvalov. "For a lawyer, this is sacred". In July, Navalny posted documents on his blog allegedly showing that Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, owned an undeclared business in the Czech Republic. The posting was described by the Financial Times as Navalny's "answering shot" for having had his emails leaked during his arrest in the previous month.

In August 2018, Navalny alleged that Viktor Zolotov stole at least US$29 million from procurement contracts for the National Guard of Russia. Shortly after his allegations against Zolotov, Navalny was imprisoned for staging protests in January 2018. Subsequently, Viktor Zolotov published a video message on 11 September challenging Navalny to a duel and promising to make "good, juicy mincemeat" of him.

Medvedev

In March 2017, Navalny published the investigation He Is Not Dimon to You, accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of corruption. The authorities either ignored the accusation or argued that it was made by a "convicted criminal" and not worth comment. On 26 March, Navalny organised a series of anti-corruption rallies in cities across Russia. In some cities, the rallies were sanctioned by authorities, but in others, including Moscow and Saint Petersburg, they were not allowed. The Moscow police said that 500 people had been detained, but according to the human-rights group OVD-Info, 1,030 people were detained in Moscow alone, including Navalny himself. On 27 March, he was fined 20,000 rubles minimum for organising an illegal protest, and jailed for 15 days for resisting arrest.

Putin

On 19 January 2021, two days after he was detained by Russian authorities upon his return to Russia, an investigation by Navalny and the FBK was published accusing President Vladimir Putin of using fraudulently obtained funds to build a massive estate for himself near the town of Gelendzhik in Krasnodar Krai, in what he called "the world's biggest bribe". The estate was first reported on in 2010 after the businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, who was involved in the project, gave details about it. According to Navalny, the estate is 39 times the size of Monaco, with the Federal Security Service (FSB) owning 70 square kilometers of land around the palace, and the estate cost over 100 billion rubles ($1.35 billion) to construct. It also showed aerial footage of the estate via a drone, and a detailed floor plan of the palace that Navalny and the FBK said was given by a contractor, which was compared to photographs from inside the palace that were leaked onto the Internet in 2011. Using the floorplan, computer-generated visualisations of the palace interior were also shown.

There are impregnable fences, its own port, its own security, a church, its own permit system, a no-fly zone, and even its own border checkpoint. It is absolutely a separate state within Russia.

This investigation also detailed an elaborate corruption scheme allegedly involving Putin's inner circle that allowed Putin to hide billions of dollars to build the estate. Navalny's team also said that it managed to confirm reporting about Putin's alleged lovers Svetlana Krivonogikh and Alina Kabaeva. Navalny's video on YouTube garnered over 20 million views in less than a day, and over 92 million after a week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a press conference called the investigation a "scam" and said that citizens should "think before transferring money to such crooks".

Putin denied ownership of the palace and the oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, Putin's childhood friend and judo partner, claimed ownership.

Criminal cases

Kirovles case

Case

On 30 July 2012, the Investigative Committee charged Navalny with embezzlement. The committee stated that he had conspired to steal timber from Kirovles, a state-owned company in Kirov Oblast, in 2009, while acting as an adviser to Kirov's governor Nikita Belykh. Investigators had closed a previous probe into the claims for lack of evidence. Navalny was released on his own recognisance but instructed not to leave Moscow.

Navalny described the charges as "weird" and unfounded. He stated that authorities "are doing it to watch the reaction of the protest movement and of Western public opinion... So far they consider both of these things acceptable and so they are continuing along this line". His supporters protested before the Investigative Committee offices.

Despite the mounting legal pressure, which Navalny described as 'political revenge for his investigations and work at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, as well as revenge for the campaign during the election period', he remained actively engaged in opposition activities. He took part in an antigovernmental protest in Moscow, undeterred by the ongoing proceedings against him. During this time, he also met with Kazakh theatre director and opposition figure Bolat Atabaev, who was visiting Moscow. The two discussed their respective political experiences and shared strategies for confronting corruption in authoritarian systems.

In April 2013, Loeb & Loeb LLP issued "An Analysis of the Russian Federation's prosecutions of Alexei Navalny", a paper detailing Investigative Committee accusations. The paper concludes that "the Kremlin has reverted to misuse of the Russian legal system to harass, isolate and attempt to silence political opponents".

Conviction and release

The Kirovles trial commenced in the city of Kirov on 17 April 2013. On 18 July, Navalny was sentenced to five years in jail for embezzlement. He was found guilty of misappropriating about 16 million rubles ($500,000) worth of lumber from a state-owned company. The sentence read by the judge Sergey Blinov was textually the same as the request of the prosecutor, with the only exception that Navalny was given five years, and the prosecution requested six years.

Later that evening, the Prosecutor's Office appealed Navalny and Ofitserov jail sentences, arguing that until the higher court affirmed the sentence, the sentence was invalid. The next morning, the appeal was granted. Navalny and Ofitserov were released on 19 July, awaiting the hearings of the higher court. The prosecutor's requested decision was described as "unprecedented" by experts.

Probation

The prison sentence was suspended by a court in Kirov on 16 October 2013, still being a burden for his political future.

Review of the sentence

On 23 February 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had violated Navalny's right to a fair trial, and ordered the government to pay him 56,000 euros in legal costs and damages.

On 16 November 2016, Russia's Supreme Court overturned the 2013 sentence, sending the verdict back to the Leninsky District Court in Kirov for review.

On 8 February 2017, the Leninsky district court of Kirov repeated its sentence of 2013 and charged Navalny with a five-year suspended sentence. Navalny announced that he would pursue the annulment of the sentence that clearly contradicts the decision of ECHR.

Yves Rocher case and house arrest

Case

In 2008, Oleg Navalny made an offer to Yves Rocher Vostok, the Eastern European subsidiary of Yves Rocher between 2008 and 2012, to accredit Glavpodpiska, which was created by Navalny, with delivering duties. On 5 August, the parties signed a contract. To fulfill the obligations under the agreement, Glavpodpiska outsourced the task to sub-suppliers, AvtoSAGA and Multiprofile Processing Company (MPC). In November and December 2012, the Investigating Committee interrogated and questioned Yves Rocher Vostok. On 10 December, Bruno Leproux, general director of Yves Rocher Vostok, filed to the Investigative Committee, asking to investigate if the Glavpodpiska subscription company had damaged Yves Rocher Vostok, and the Investigative Committee initiated a case.

The prosecution claimed Glavpodpiska embezzled money by taking duties and then redistributing them to other companies for lesser amounts of money, and collecting the surplus: 26.7 million rubles ($540,000) from Yves Rocher Vostok, and 4.4 million rubles from the MPC. The funds were claimed to be subsequently legalised by transferring them on fictitious grounds from a fly-by-night company to Kobyakovskaya Fabrika Po Lozopleteniyu, a willow weaving company founded by Navalny and operated by his parents. The Navalnys denied the charges. The Navalny brothers' lawyers claimed the investigators "added phrases like 'bearing criminal intentions' to a description of regular entrepreneurial activity". According to Oleg Navalny's lawyer, Glavpodpiska did not just collect money, it controlled provision of means of transport, execution of orders, collected and expedited production to the carriers, and was responsible before clients for terms and quality of executing orders.

None of the witnesses confirmed that there were any losses, except MPC CEO Sergei Shustov who said he had learned about his losses from an investigator and believed him without making audits. Both brothers and their lawyers claimed Alexei Navalny did not participate in the Glavpodpiska operations, and witnesses all stated they had never encountered Alexei Navalny in person before the trial.

House arrest and limitations

Following the imputed violation of travel restrictions, Navalny was placed under house arrest and prohibited from communicating with anyone other than his family, lawyers, and investigators on 28 February 2014. Navalny claimed the arrest was politically motivated, and he filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. On 7 July, he declared the complaint had been accepted and given priority; the court compelled the Government of Russia to provide answers to a questionnaire.

The house arrest, in particular, prohibited usage of the internet; however, new posts were released under his social media accounts after the arrest was announced. A 5 March post claimed the accounts were controlled by his Anti-Corruption Foundation teammates and his wife Yulia. On 13 March, his LiveJournal blog was blocked in Russia, because, according to the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), "functioning of the given web page breaks the regulation of the juridical decision of the bail hearing of a citizen against whom a criminal case has been initiated".

The house arrest was eased a number of times: On 21 August, Navalny was allowed to communicate with his co-defendants; a journalist present in the courthouse at the moment confirmed Navalny was allowed to communicate with "anyone but the Yves Rocher case witnesses". On 10 October, his right to communicate with the press was confirmed by another court, and he was allowed to make comments on the case in media (Navalny's plea not to prolong the arrest was, however, rejected). On 19 December, he was allowed to mail correspondence to authorities and international courts. Navalny again pleaded not to prolong the arrest, but the plea was rejected again.

Conviction

The verdict was announced on 30 December 2014. Both brothers were found guilty of fraud against Multiprofile Processing Company (MPC) and Yves Rocher Vostok and money laundering, and were convicted under Articles 159.4 §§ 2 and 3 and 174.1 § 2 (a) and (b) of the Criminal Code. Alexei Navalny was given 31⁄2 years of suspended sentence, and Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 31⁄2 years in prison and was arrested after the verdict was announced; both had to pay a fine of 500,000 rubles and a compensation to the MPC of over 4 million rubles. In the evening, several thousand protesters gathered in the center of Moscow. Navalny broke his house arrest to attend the rally and was immediately apprehended by the police and brought back home.

Both brothers filed complaints to the European Court of Human Rights: Oleg's was communicated and given priority; Alexei's was reviewed in the context of the previous complaint related to this case and the Government of Russia had been "invited to submit further observations". The second instance within the country confirmed the verdict, only releasing Alexei from the responsibility to pay his fine. Both prosecutors and defendants were not satisfied with this decision.

ECHR

On 17 October 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Navalny's conviction for fraud and money laundering "was based on an unforeseeable application of criminal law and that the proceedings were arbitrary and unfair". The Court found that the domestic court's decisions had been arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable. ECHR found the Russian courts' decisions violated articles 6 and 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights. On 15 November 2018, the Grand Chamber upheld the decision.

Indemnification

After the Yves Rocher case, Navalny had to pay a compensation of 4.4 million rubles. He declared the case was "a frame up", but he added he would pay the sum as this could affect granting his brother's parole. On 7 October 2015, Alexei's lawyer announced the defendant willingly paid 2.9 million and requested an installment plan for the rest of the sum. The request was granted, except the term was contracted from the requested five months to two, and a part of the sum declared paid (900,000 rubles; arrested from Navalny's banking account) was not yet received by the police; the prosecutors declared that may happen because of inter-process delays.

Later that month, Kirovles sued Navalny for the 16.1 million rubles declared pecuniary injury; Navalny declared he had not expected the suit, as Kirovles did not initiate it during the 2012–2013 trial. On 23 October, a court resolved the said sum should be paid by the three defendants. The court denied the defendants' motion 14.7 million had already been paid by that point; the verdict and the payment sum were justified by a ruling by a Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Navalny declared he could not cover the requested sum; he called the suit a "drain-dry strategy" by authorities.

Other cases

In late December 2012, the Investigative Committee of Russia asserted that Allekt, an advertising company headed by Navalny, defrauded the Union of Right Forces (SPS) political party in 2007 by taking 100 million rubles ($3.2 million) payment for advertising and failing to honor its contract. If charged and convicted, Navalny could be jailed for up to 10 years. Leonid Gozman, a former SPS official, was quoted as saying: "Nothing of the sort happened—he committed no robbery". Earlier in December, as reported by the BBC, "the Investigative Committee charged [...] Navalny and his brother Oleg with embezzling 55 million rubles ($1.76 million) in 2008–2011 while working in a postal business". Navalny, who denied the allegations in the two previous cases, sought to laugh off news of the third inquiry with a tweet stating "Fiddlesticks". In April 2020, Yandex search engine started artificially placing negative commentary about Navalny on the top positions in its search results for his name. Yandex declared this was part of an "experiment" and returned to presenting organic search results.

Navalny alleged that Russian billionaire and businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin was linked to a company called Moskovsky Shkolnik (Moscow schoolboy) that had supplied poor quality food to schools which had caused a dysentery outbreak. In April 2019, Moskovsky Shkolnik filed a lawsuit against Navalny. In October 2019, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Navalny to pay 29.2 million rubles. Navalny said that "Cases of dysentery were proven using documents. But it's us that has to pay." By April 2019, Navalny had won six complaints against Russian authorities in the ECHR for a total of €225,000. Prigozhin was quoted by the press service of his catering company Concord Management and Consulting on 25 August 2020 as saying that he intended to enforce a court decision that required Navalny, his associate Lyubov Sobol and his Anti-Corruption Foundation to pay 88 million rubles in damages to the Moskovsky Shkolnik company over a video investigation.

Criminal cases

During and after the Kirovles trial, a number of prominent people expressed support to Navalny and/or condemned the trial. The last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called it "proof that we do not have independent courts". Former Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin stated that it was "looking less like a punishment than an attempt to isolate him from social life and the electoral process". It was also criticised by novelist Boris Akunin, and jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who called it similar to the treatment of political opponents during the Soviet era.