MOSCOW, April 22. /ITAR-TASS/. A magistrate court of Moscow's Babushkinsky district has found opposition activist Alexei Navalny guilty of slander and fined him 300,000 roubles.

Criminal proceedings against blogger Navalny were opened after municipal deputy Alexei Lisovsky sued him for slander. Prior to that, Navalny wrote on Twitter that the deputy was a drug addict. Judge Anna Nekryach accepted an electronic copy of the blogger's post as evidence despite the objections by Navalny's lawyer.

Earlier, Navalny denied his guilt. "The terms of my house arrest prohibit the use of the Internet, so I don't use it. I have a statement from the Federal Penitentiary Service that I'm observing the terms of house arrest. My Twitter account can be accessed by an unlimited number of persons," he said.

He insisted that there was no real proof of his guilt.

"Today's sentence will be certainly appealed within ten days, it has not yet came into effect, so our client does not threaten prison,"Navalny's jurist Olga Mikhailova said.

 

Alexei Navalny cases

Navalny has been under house arrest as a suspect in another criminal case.

The criminal case was opened against the blogger after Moscow municipal lawmaker Lisovenko filed a lawsuit against him. Navalny’s record in social network Twitter in which he called the lawmaker as a drug addict caused the lawmaker’s lawsuit.

Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg are charged with embezzlement of 26 million rubles (around $714,200) in Yves Rocher Vostok cosmetics company and more than 4 million rubles (around $109,800) in multi-profile processing company and money laundering to the tune of more than 21 million rubles (around $576,800). Detectives found that from August 2008 through May 2011 the Main Subscription Agency controlled by the brothers rendered postal delivery services to a foreign trading company from the Volga River city of Yaroslavl to Moscow and back. Money transfer has exceeded sharply the amount of shipments.

Earlier, Navalny was convicted in the Kirovles fraud case. Navalny and former head of Vyatka timber company Pyotr Ofitserov were found guilty of Kirovles property embezzlement and were sentenced to 5 and 4 years in suspension, respectively.