MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. The Moscow City Court on Thursday upheld the district court’s ruling not to change the suspended sentence of Russian opposition activist and blogger Alexei Navalny in the Yves Rocher case to a real prison term as officially requested by the Federal Penitentiary Service, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom.

The blogger did not attend the hearing.

The prosecutor’s office had previously filed an appeal against Navalny’s suspended sentence, seeking to imprison him. However, on August 1, Moscow’s Lyublinsky District Court ruled in favor of upholding his current suspended sentence.

On December 30, 2014, Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg were found guilty by Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky District Court of embezzling Yves Rocher’s funds. Alexei received a 3.5-year suspended sentence, while his brother was sentenced to three and a half years behind bars.