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Russian Supreme Court rejects Navalny’s complaint concerning Kirovles embezzlement case

Navalny’s lawyer said the complaint against the verdict had been communicated by the European Court for Human Rights

MOSCOW, March 22. /TASS/. Russia’s Supreme Court has rejected a cassation complaint blogger Alexei Navalny filed in connection with the Kirovles embezzlement case, a court source told TASS.

"The Supreme Court has considered the case and rejected the request to hand it over to a court of cassation," the source said.

Navalny’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova, in turn, told TASS that the reasons for the decision were unknown. She added that the complaint against the verdict had been communicated by the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) and the parties were currently providing their comments.

Kirovles case

In February 2017, the Leninsky District Court in the Russian city of Kirov found Alexei Navalny and Pyotr Ofitserov guilty in the Kirovles embezzlement case. Navalny was handed a five-year suspended sentence with a probation period of one year and five months, while Ofitserov received a four-year suspended sentence. Besides, they were sentenced to pay a fine of 500,000 rubles ($8,600) each.

It was the second ruling Kirov’s Leninsky District Court made in the Kirovles case, as in July 2013 it had handed the same sentence to Navalny and Ofitserov. However, in 2016, when the ECHR said that Navalny’s right to a fair trial had been violated, the Russian Supreme Court overturned the decision and ordered the Kirov court to re-examine the case.

According to investigators, in 2009, Navalny misled the then director of the Kirovles timber company Vyacheslav Opalev, persuading him to make a disadvantageous contract. In the February to September period of 2009, Opalev, together with Navalny and Ofitserov, embezzled timber worth 16 mln rubles ($280,000).