All news

Oppositionist Navalny elected in the Aeroflot board of directors

Navalny already stated that he intends to protect the rights of minority shareholders and the interests of the air carrier

MOSCOW, June 26 (Itar-Tass) — Well-known oppositionist Alexei Navalny was elected in the Aeroflot Board of Directors from the National Reserve Bank owned by Alexander Lebedev. Navalny already stated that he intends to protect the rights of minority shareholders and the interests of the air carrier. The Aeroflot leadership pledged that they are ready for dialogue.

Business tycoon Alexander Lebedev, who owns about 15% of stock in Aeroflot, nominated Navalny as a candidate for a director of the Aeroflot board, the RBC daily reported. The owners of 787 million shares of the air company voted for him that is much less than for Aeroflot Director General Vitaly Savelyev or head of the Rostechnologii state corporation Sergei Chemezov (859 million and 896 million votes, respectively). Navalny noted in his blog that he was elected thanks to Alexander Lebedev’s stake and the votes of minority shareholders. “In this sense, it was very helpful that the largest proxy advisers (international consultants, which give recommendations for voting to the minority shareholders) found me as an independent director and recommended to support me, great thanks to them for this,” the blogger noted.

Aeroflot took the election of Navalny in the board of directors in the calm way, the Kommersant daily reported. Vitaly Savelyev pledged that he is ready to work with Alexei Navalny. Moreover, he believes that the experience of the blogger “can be useful for the company.” In fact, the company stated that after the work with a quite active member of the board of directors Sergei Aleksashenko Aeroflot is afraid of nothing, even Navalny. Aleksashenko believes that Alexei Navalny can bring “fresh views” to the company. “He has a rich experience of corporative legal practice, the board of directors traditionally has many financiers and lacks jurists,” he noted.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets daily recalled that Navalny has a long experience of the rivalry with the leadership of many state-run companies, where he is only an ordinary minority shareholder.

For instance, last week Rosneft President Igor Sechin accused Navalny (he has only 345 ordinary shares at the cost of little more than 2,000 dollars in the company) of collaboration with the rivals. For this Navalny called Sechin as “a fool.” In fact, Navalny has been seeking already for three years to examine the commercial contracts, which Rosneft concluded with the Chinese Bank of Development in 2009. The blogger suspects that the oil supplies in China are made at a much lower price than the world prices. These documents are not given to him (by the way, Navalny earlier accused Transneft of misappropriating four billion dollars in the construction of the East Siberia-Pacific oil pipeline). Now Aeroflot will have to disclose its secrets. People will learn about these secrets soon. Although Aeroflot CEO Vitaly Savelyev stated recently that “those who have something to be afraid of should be scared about Navalny.”