MOSCOW, July 6 (Itar-Tass) - Chairman of the Russian Investigation Committee Alexander Bastrykin gave a roasting to his subordinates from the Kirov Region on Thursday. He was indignant with the termination of the criminal case versus Navalny. The criticism was caused by the correspondence between oppositionist Alexei Navalny and Governor of the Kirov Region Nikita Belykh that was stolen and published as a result of the email cracking.
On Thursday, Chairman of the Investigation Committee Alexander Bastrykin asked the leadership of the Investigation Committee department in the Kirov Region, why the criminal case against public figure Alexei Navalny that was opened in May 2011 under the article for causing material damage through fraud and trust abuse was terminated without explaining any reasons for this, the Novye Izvestia daily reported. The newspaper recalled that the criminal case was opened over the suspicions, that being an adviser of the governor in the Kirov Region Navalny convinced the directorate of the Kirovles state unitary enterprise of signing an unprofitable contract for the sale of timber products.
Bastrykin gave a roasting to his subordinates over the fact the correspondence between Navalny and Governor of the Kirov Region Nikita Belykh was stolen as a result of the email cracking and made public later. The correspondence dwelt on Belykh’s debt to Navalny that may be repaid after the approval of the amendments in the budget. Meanwhile, the correspondence mentioned a quite non-transparent deal with the distillery and the settlement of several problems between Navalny and the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry through the assistance from Belykh. “Today the whole country is discussing that the talks were made public, but we do not hear anything, but some murmuring. You have a criminal case against this person, and you terminated it sneakily,” Alexander Bastrykin said with indignation at a meeting of the Investigation Committee board. The criminal case against Navalny was opened and passed to Moscow, in the Main Investigation Department of the Investigation Committee, spokesman for the Investigation Committee Vladimir Markin said.
The Novye Izvestia daily noted that this week two United Russia members – senator Ruslan Gattarov and State Duma deputy Vladimir Burmatov sent addresses to the State Duma with the demands to check the facts mentioned in the correspondence. The lawmakers do not ask to check the lawfulness of posting the correspondence in the Internet. As for Nikita Belykh, Vladimir Burmatov voiced the position of the United Russia faction in the State Duma that offers to strip him of the powers of governor.
Navalny’s lawyer Vadim Kobzev explained that though Navalny and Belykh acknowledged the authenticity of the correspondence, this does not mean anything, because the email messages did not contain any signs of the crime, so, they can hardly be included in the criminal case.
After Alexei Navalny’s email and Twitter blog were cracked by unidentified hackers (a hacker under the nickname Hell confessed in these actions, but Navalny is confident that the Investigation Committee is involved in this case), some parts of the correspondence between the blogger and Governor of the Kirov Region Nikita Belykh were leaked in the Internet that made the United Russia members indignant, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily noted. The ‘waves’ of this event are getting higher.
“The fact of cracking the email is a criminal offence,” the newspaper quoted lawyer Nikolai Polozov as saying. “How it can be stated that the information achieved in the illegal way can be laid as a basis for the criminal deliberations! Our law enforcement agencies should deal with the investigation into the illegal posting of the private correspondence in the open access of the Internet,” he said.
Lawyer Yuri Schmidt is in absolute solidarity with Polozov. “It is absolutely unlawful and it is a criminal offence,” Schmidt stated. “What the deputies are doing is unlawfulness, though it is an officially lawful step. This is a shame on those, who under the guise of ‘a private hacker’ cracked the correspondence (probably the whole department is working on it), and on those who are seeking to base the accusations on this information. This situation is inadmissible for a democratic country, which we want to live in. No European legal instance would consider such address,” he underlined.