MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. The Moscow City Court has upheld a lower instance’s ruling to keep the shares and bank accounts of opposition blogger Alexei Navalny seized in the Yves Rocher embezzlement case, a TASS correspondent reports from the courtroom.
"To leave the ruling by Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court unchanged and deny granting a complaint of the counsel for the defense," the judge read out the court’s decision.
The Zamoskvoretsky Court earlier ruled to seize Alexei Navalny’s assets comprising securities represented by equities and funds on bank accounts worth a total of about 36,000 rubles ($610). Counsel for Navalny’s defense Vadim Kobzev considers the court’s ruling unlawful and earlier requested to repeal it.
According to the attorney, Navalny "has no financial obligation unfulfilled, no civil litigations or unpaid penalties."
The complaint was examined in Navalny’s absence.
On December 30, 2014, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court found the Navalny brothers guilty of embezzling Yves Rocher funds and sentenced Alexey Navalny to a suspended sentence of 3 years and 6 months, while Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 3 years 6 months in a general-security colony.
The court also ordered the Navalny brothers to pay over 4 million rubles ($65,000) in compensation under a lawsuit filed by Multiprofile Processing Company recognized as an affected party under the embezzlement case, and also fined each brother 500,000 rubles ($8,300).
The Moscow City Court later upheld the verdict and relieved Alexei Navalny of the additional punishment in the form of the 500,000-ruble fine due to procedural violations. In late 2015, Alexei Navalny repaid all the liabilities both for himself and his brother.