Is Navalny a criminal? Navalny's political activities. Alexei Navalny - Mind Games

Interview: Tata Oleinik
Photo: Yuri Koltsov

The blogger, lawyer and truth-seeker, the biggest headache for our officials, told us why he mocks them so much.

Let’s say that among our readers there are those who don’t know you. How would you introduce yourself to them?

As a lawyer who often does what a prosecutor should do.

How did you become the worst nightmare of our bureaucracy?

In the most natural way for a securities specialist. I looked around our stock market and selected companies that would inevitably bring good profits. In our case, this is, naturally, mainly oil and gas. After which he bought back small blocks of shares. And when these shares brought me, frankly speaking, unsatisfactory income, I, as a minority shareholder, began to demand an explanation. Why do sales go through an intermediary? Why was the equipment purchased at twice the market price? Where did the income from this branch go? And so on. When my requests were ignored, I filed a lawsuit.

And in court you were turned away.

Not always. No matter how dependent the court is, sometimes it is almost impossible to make any decision other than a fair one. Which was rare, but was done if the regulatory authorities loosened their grip.

Now everyone is hearing the story of Transneft, which you accuse of stealing... how many billions are there?

According to my estimates, which coincide with the conclusions Accounts Chamber, at least four billion dollars were stolen during the construction of the ESPO oil pipeline.

So you are suing, gnawing on this granite...

If you are talking about power, then this is far from granite, but something much softer.

But how, isn’t our vertical indestructible, powerful and all that?

In fact, there is no vertical. This is fiction. There is a gang of swindlers who are hastily plundering the country. She has the strength to put pressure on those who are especially dissatisfied, but in fact she is powerless, unprofessional and does not control the situation in the country. These people are not capable of creating anything: there is not a single national project that they would not fail. Take any task declared over the last ten years - has at least one of them been completed? Do we have order in the Caucasus? Have we overcome corruption? Reformed the police or army? The “Affordable Housing” program - where is this housing?

Where we are not. By the way, about pressing the dissatisfied. How many cases have been filed against you?

Not a single one.

I think it's three. Firstly, you are accused of the fact that, as an adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, you worked so poorly that one small but nice company could not earn 30 thousand dollars. Am I confusing anything?

Yes, this is such a sluggish biting. The case is then opened, then closed, but it is unlikely that they will be able to cobble together anything from it due to the complete absurdity of the claims.

By the way, why did you leave the post of adviser to the governor? Excellent, warm position, such prospects...

Because I was convinced: the opinion that good man V bad system can change something - wrongly. That's not how it works. You either play by the proposed rules or leave.

Case number two. Sorry, you mocked our national shrine. What on your website rospil.info does the coat of arms hold instead of a scepter and orb? A saw in each paw?

He holds exactly what he has there at the moment. And so far this case has not been opened either, only complaints against me to the prosecutor’s office.

That is, in " United Russia"Can't there be honest people? Only crooks or idiots?

It can't. Thieves and swindlers. Well, there are idiots among them too.

Did you know that in lately Rumors have become more frequent that not everything is so simple? What, it’s scary to say, are you a KGB agent in an image personally invented by Sechin... or Surkov... Are there any options here?

I take this calmly. People who say that live in binary system: We do something only if we have paid. It doesn’t fit in their head: you can do something simply because it’s right. I don’t work for such people and I won’t waste time trying to prove anything to them.

There is another interesting version. That you really believe in what you say and do, but you are being used as a pawn by evil forces. With your help, they destroy competitors. How do you like this Kafkaesque development of events?

No way. I don't believe in conspiracy theories and complex constructions. Yes, it may very well be that when we are pursuing one swindler, we are helping another swindler. But this is not a reason to stop pursuing crooks! I do what I think I should do.

So you and your kind have won. Everyone you fought with gets on their airplanes and flies off to, say, Finland - to villas and bank accounts. And we stay. With these people. Without Putin, without security forces, one on one. And what?

And wonderful. I am not afraid of my people, there is no need to make some kind of stupid monster out of them. This is a wonderful people with a great, albeit tragic, history, worthy of a normal life and capable of building it.

Yeah. Only now the words “freedom”, “liberalism”, “democracy” have become practically dirty words. After all, in fact, the only force that is still somehow supported here is the nationalists. After all, they will come to power.

Well, let them come. The main thing is that there are fair elections, and whether nationalists, communists or liberals will win there is a second question. In Eastern European countries there was communist revenge everywhere for a while. In Italy, nationalists are now virtually in power. And nothing, the world is not collapsing.

You see, Alexey... how can I tell you... We still don’t East Europe and not Italy.

Yes. We are us. But at the same time, we are no worse than anyone else. I believe in the brilliant words of Kant: there are only two worthwhile things - the starry sky above us and the moral law within us. And all people have the same value system; we all initially understand what is good and what is bad.

Is it good to stone an unfaithful wife?

No. This is very bad.

You'd be surprised how many people disagree with you right now.

I am now talking about a specific European civilizational ethics, which is also accepted here. No matter how much our country is being pulled into some kind of wild Eurasianism, we all want to live in a conditional Germany, and not in a conditional Saudi Arabia.

By the way, about beating. Aren't you afraid that one day your activities may have a sad but logical conclusion?

A logical conclusion awaits us all, I don’t plan to live forever. No one is immune from this. Be you the most compromising, the most ordinary person- There are no guarantees that one day you will not find yourself a victim of this system. Here is Sergei Magnitsky - he didn’t want to become a political martyr, did he? He was an ordinary decent lawyer who was killed in prison for doing his duty.

If the question is whether I trust Navalny unconditionally in everything, then I will answer in the negative. I'll explain why below. But I trust Navalny regarding his investigations. I don’t even see the point of checking them in detail, since my previous work allowed me to see much more than what FBK tells. I saw Sechin’s yachts in Moscow, I remember how the vice-president of AFK Sistema drunkenly talked about the scheme for buying Bashneft and the pressure on Chichvarkin, I know where the “fleet” of Rostec top managers is. Moreover, I am sure that the FBK could have done an investigation into this with much less resources, since it is all under our noses and is not particularly hidden. But for some reason these investigations do not exist. This, of course, is not a reason not to believe Navalny, but it is a bell that confuses me.

Now about what I don’t believe in Navalny and why. I don’t trust Navalny that he can and, most importantly, wants to overcome corruption. It is clear that Alexei acts selectively, precisely choosing goals in his political interests. He does not fight corruption as such, he gets whists for himself in a political campaign. Someone will say: “So what? This is still moving us into a bright future,” but I don’t think so. The goals are much more important than actions, since they determine the choice of tools. If the fight against corruption no longer meets Alexei’s goals, he will immediately abandon it. Navalny is a fairly literate and educated politician. And his main goal is not to improve the country, but to gain power. From this point of view, he reminds me a lot of Lenin, even their political strategies are extremely similar. But even if I'm wrong about Lenin and common features- just a coincidence or my sick imagination, then no one will deny the fact that Navalny is fighting corruption for the sake of power, and not for the sake of the fight itself.

Do I believe that Navalny understands how to shape and strengthen institutions in the country? No, I don't believe it. He doesn't have a clear program. He acts on the principle “we’ll come to power, and then we’ll sort it out.” Well, and, probably, a little according to the principle “abroad will help us.” This approach also has a right to exist if there is a manager around professional team. Around Navalny I see a loyal team. Loyalty always comes at a price in the future. This is another reason why I do not believe that Alexey will hand out posts, trying to maximize the efficiency of governing the country.

Do I believe that Alexey will imprison all the thieves and confiscate their property? I don’t rule it out. The only thing that raises doubts is the confiscation scheme, because there are unknown amounts of money there, which is equal to a huge temptation for the perpetrators to appropriate part of the confiscated property. I don’t think that Navalny himself will cut this money, but I’ll remind you again about the loyal team. Of course, there are plenty of ideological people there, but mathematics tells us that there will also be dishonest people there. I don’t know what percentage of such people are in Russia, but no one has canceled the normal distribution.

Do I believe that Navalny will increase spending on education and medicine, while at the same time reducing spending on the military-industrial complex? Don't know. Everything depends on the foreign policy and economic situation. For now, this is the simplest and most correct political argument against the current government, nothing more. Navalny has no access to real economic indicators countries, and acting on the principle of clumsy sectoral division of GDP is either deceit or amateurism. Any competent economist will tell you this. It may turn out that there will be nothing to cut, and nothing to raise from.

I think we can sum it up. I believe all Navalny's investigations. I don’t believe his figurative and deliberately primitive presentation, since this is purely a media trick. I don't trust him to know how to keep his promises. Do I think he is doing a good job in the current situation? Yes, I think so. Do I think he will good president? I don’t know, but in my opinion, the chances are low. Will Navalny be better than Putin? I think there is a critical error in this question. An attempt to replace one “savior” with another. We need to create a competitive political system, and not believe in Navalny. And this is another argument why I don’t believe it: Navalny is coming to power individually. He is also three steps away - his entourage. We have already walked this path.

Of course, I understand that many of Alexey’s defenders will give me many minuses. But before you do this, think about it: you have divided the world according to the principle “Those who are not with us are against us.” In your paradigm, if a person does not support Navalny, then he supports Putin. Does this remind you of anything? If not, then I’ll give you a hint: this is how the Bolsheviks thought.

The rapid growth in popularity of Alexei Navalny, who is even called the future president of Russia, makes it fitting to ask an immodest question: how much money did he use to promote himself?

“I went to prison as a blogger and came out as the future president of Russia,” the writer Viktor Shenderovich said about Alexei Navalny. Navalny was arrested for 15 days in December during a rally for fair elections.

Blogger Navalny has already become a president, not a president, but a full-fledged politician. He told Vedomosti that he registered non-profit organization The Anti-Corruption Foundation has begun collecting donations. Navalny says he needs $300,000 a year. The experience of his own project “Rospil” shows that Navalny can collect even more - sympathetic citizens without any funds, just in good faith, have already donated about the same amount.

Navalny is not going to accept anonymous donations this time. “People regularly come and offer money. And I tell them: let’s identify yourself [publicly] and give me money. They are all afraid. Now a number of brave people have gathered who are ready to say that they are giving me money. They are giving the amounts are different. Starting from $100,000 to $10,000,” says Navalny.

He plans to collect all his projects into the new fund. “Rospil” (exposing theft in public procurement), “Rosyama” (collecting complaints about bad roads) and “Rosvybory” (organizing election monitoring) will become divisions of the fund with separate sub-accounts. “Perhaps there will be a separate sub-account for the fight against Vekselberg, with Deripaska and with everyone else,” Navalny argues. “If you are interested in a specific investigation, you think that we are conducting it effectively, and you are ready to give money for it - please.”

Vedomosti became aware of the names of two sponsors who have already taken the risk of supporting Navalny’s fund. This is the son of the founder of VimpelCom, businessman Boris Zimin (confirmed that he has already given 300,000 rubles and will give approximately the same amount every month) and the former manager of Alfa Group Vladimir Ashurkov (confirmed that he has given 300,000 rubles.

Thus, political project Navalny receives constant legal funding. “Everything will be clean and without cash. All the names of the people who give money will be known, and in what quantity, and all expenses will be known,” he promises.

How did he live until now, constantly working on non-profit projects? Vedomosti went in search of Navalny’s sources of income.

Student

Nominally a student, Navalny became a businessman in his first year. In 1993, he entered the law department of the Peoples' Friendship University (he missed 1 point at Moscow State University).

And it was his parents - retired officer Anatoly and economist Lyudmila Navalny - who organized their own business, the Kobyakovsky wicker weaving factory. The same factory where Lyudmila Navalnaya worked went bankrupt. “And so the parents nearby rented an abandoned village club, lured the craftsmen there, convincing them not to retrain as security guards, and re-created the Kobyakovsky factory,” Navalny recalls. He became a co-founder, but at first he did not participate in the business at all. I decided to earn money in my specialty - the time was like this: “It was clear that all the teachers were very disconnected from real life, and it seemed that you don’t need to do this study, but you need to go to work - and you will immediately earn a billion dollars.”

Navalny went to work at the Aeroflot bank: “I remember sitting and writing all sorts of complaints like: immediately return our billion. But I didn’t go directly to the courts.” Billions were not returned to the bank - in January 1997, the Central Bank revoked its license.

The next place of work was the development "ST-group" of Alexander and Shalva Chigirinsky (now it is called "Bullfinches"). “Navalny came in 1998 following an advertisement,” recalls the current general director of Snegiri, Gennady Melkumyan, who in those years headed the company’s legal department. “We considered several candidates, and settled on him: he’s smart, he catches on quickly.”

Navalny recalls that the Chigirinskys were also involved in currency control: “There was a completely idiotic law on currency regulation, which terribly interfered with work. Then [in this business] there were supposedly international transactions: either foreigners bought buildings, or foreign loans. But in practice these were transactions between Russian companies in foreign jurisdictions - we were constantly subject to this law."

Navalny left ST Group in 1999, shortly after the crisis. “Many developers collapsed then. SBS-Agro Bank, for which we did a lot of construction, did the same,” he explains. “Then a lot of people fled [from the company]. And I also thought that we had to go to new job to earn more."

That same year he received his law degree. Navalny regrets that he worked part-time while studying: “You have five years to study, you need to study, and not do all sorts of bullshit.”

Businessman

Back in 1997, Navalny registered Allekt LLC. With the Chigirinskys, in addition to currency control, he dealt with antimonopoly legislation - obtaining permits for purchase and sale transactions. “I got the hang of it quite quickly. A huge number of people appeared who asked me for advice on this matter,” Navalny recalls. “And I thought that now I can do the same thing perfectly well, but without any Chigirinskys.”

He had two clients who "provided regular orders." Other customers found him through word of mouth. “There are people who are selling a building, they need to complete the deal in a month. They gave me documents, I completed everything with the antimonopoly service in a month and received my $700,” says Navalny. In a good month he could earn $4000-5000.

He opened two more businesses in the early 2000s together with his friends from law school - N.N. Securities and Eurasian transport systems"Navalny says that he worked with each of these companies (and received money from them) for about a year.

"N.N. Securities" - "a company that traded securities on the stock exchange." By that time, Navalny received the second in absentia higher education- at the Financial Academy, specialty - "stock exchange business". “N.N. [in the name of the company] means Nesterenko and Navalny. I had a friend from the institute, Vanya Nesterenko, he is one of the leaders of Mosfundamentstroy-6. We had a small amount that Vanya’s dad gave. And some At that time we were trading quite successfully,” says Navalny. And then “one of the stock market crises happened.” “It turned out funny: in our group, everyone worked on the stock exchange, naturally, and out of 12 people, eight companies went bankrupt. We went bankrupt too,” says Navalny.

“Eurasian Transport Systems,” according to Navalny, “is also a company from those romantic times, when everyone believed that whatever you did, everything would start to bring you a huge amount of money. My friend and I created such an office with a pretentious name, she was just handling logistics." They decided to make money by loading cars bringing cargo to Moscow - in order not to drive back empty, the drivers gave a discount. “We came to the metro station, there were traders who worked with the drivers and agreed on how to transport goods,” Navalny laughs. It was not he who went to the aunts - he was responsible for legal support and finances. Soon the partners separated. According to Navalny, “this business was interesting, you could make a lot of money from it, but it was very dreary.”

And Navalny by that time was already working at Yabloko: the money that Allect, N.N. Securities and Eurasian Transport Systems brought in allowed him to “do what he liked, but did not bring in money.”

Functionary

Navalny also came to Yabloko based on an advertisement he saw on the party’s website. It was 2000, when Vladimir Putin had already become president. Navalny remembers that then the first conversations began about raising the entry barrier to the State Duma for political parties. “It was clear that this was directed against Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces. Even though I wasn’t a big fan of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, I thought: I’ll just go ahead and join on principle.”

Navalny was accepted as a candidate, and he remained in this status for about a year. “Immediately he began to be active in the Moscow Yabloko, spoke at meetings, put forward proposals. Later he joined my team,” recalls Yabloko party leader Sergei Mitrokhin.

At first, Navalny worked for Yabloko in his main specialty - he became an activist in mobile legal groups that participated in regional elections. For this work “they paid ridiculous money: travel and fees of 2000-3000 rubles.”

In 2001 he became a member of the party. Ilya Yashin, with whom Navalny worked side by side for several years, says that the party paid its functionaries little: Navalny worked for $300 a month - he headed a group for holding protests.

At party work, Navalny became friends with functionaries from the SPS - Maria Gaidar and Nikita Belykh. “This was during the period of romantic friendship between the SPS and Yabloko,” he says. With Gaidar, Navalny created the “Democratic Alternative” (“YES!”).

One of the projects "YES!" there were political debates that took place in clubs, led by Navalny himself. The debate was a success. “It became clear that there were a lot of people, it was necessary to bring this to some new capacity,” recalls Yashin. Gaidar and Navalny began sending out applications for grants.

“We received one grant from the Public Chamber - $15,000. We ourselves were surprised that we received it,” says Navalny. We immediately bought furniture for the “YES!” office, which was located near the station. m. "Novokuznetskaya". The second grant, also for $15,000, was given by the American National Endowment for Democracy. The money was spent mainly on renting halls for debates. “Since the debates were very successful, the Americans offered us more money, but we refused - provocations began at the debates,” says Navalny. And the project was canceled.

Cooperation with the SPS at least once allowed Navalny to make money. During the 2007 elections, his company Allekt became an agent of the Union of Right Forces for placing outdoor advertising. Through Allect, SPS purchased advertising worth 99 million rubles. Navalny received a commission of 5% from this money, i.e. 5 million rubles. “The documents were given to the Central Election Commission, this was an official payment,” he emphasizes.

Navalny was expelled from Yabloko in December 2007. According to the party, for nationalist propaganda (in the summer of 2007, together with the National Bolshevik Zakhar Prilepin, he created the “People” movement). According to Navalny himself, for criticizing the party founder Grigory Yavlinsky.

Minority shareholder

Navalny left the party, but did not stop being an activist. On the contrary, he started a project that brought him real recognition - exposing theft in state-owned companies. In the spring of 2008, Navalny for about 300,000 rubles. bought shares of five oil and gas companies: Rosneft, Gazprom, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz, Gazprom Neft. And he began to fight for his rights as a minority shareholder - to demand that companies disclose information, make public abuses, write statements to law enforcement agencies, etc.

The first high-profile action (and a post on Navalny’s “live journal”) took place in May 2008 and was dedicated to the oil trader Gunvor, co-owned by Putin’s acquaintance Gennady Timchenko. Navalny demanded that Rosneft and Surgutneftegaz explain why they export oil through Gunvor.

“It’s obvious that these people are robbing,” says Navalny. “I decided to take an absolutely formal route - just freeze it out: well, if they’re robbing, I’ll write to the police!”

Things went well. Navalny recalls that “policemen and generally everyone else in the world came to him, saying: there is an interesting case and we are ready to hand over the materials.” Navalny published posts “How they saw at Gazprom”, “How they saw at VTB”, “How they saw at Transneft”, etc.

Vedomosti found several assistants to Navalny in his minority struggle. In the fall of 2008, Navalny came to the senior special investigator important matters Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to Pavel Zhesterov. The investigator spent 1.5 years unsuccessfully investigating a criminal case about how Gazprom’s subsidiary, Mezhregiongaz, purchased Novatek gas for several years not directly, but through the intermediary Trustinvestgaz, who earned over 2 billion rubles from this. “The main problem was that there was no statement from the victim in the case,” says Zhesterov. “Neither Gazprom nor Mezhregiongaz considered themselves as such.” No statement - no action. The victim ultimately became Navalny, who owned 10 shares of Gazprom.

The efforts of Navalny and Zhesterov did not end in anything. In the spring of 2009, the criminal case was seized from Zhesterov, and in the summer it was terminated. But after this story, employees of the DEB and UBEP began to contact Zhesterov with questions about whether it was possible for them to receive a statement from Navalny. Zhesterov says that he forwarded their requests to Navalny, who went, looked at the materials and decided whether to write him a statement. Navalny says that this happened once or twice.

In the case of drilling platforms that VTB Leasing bought through intermediaries, overpaying 1.5 times, Navalny was helped by former Yukos lawyer Pavel Ivlev. Navalny told him the story about the drilling rigs in the USA - Ivlev has lived there since 2004, and Navalny did an internship at Yale University. Navalny, Ivlev recalls, complained that he could not find the beneficiaries of the offshore company where the money from the deal had settled. “I told him that I know Cyprus well, I have registered many companies there myself, and told him where to go,” says Ivlev. “We can say that thanks to me, Navalny filed a lawsuit in Cyprus, saying that he, as a VTB shareholder, was defrauded of $150 million.” .

After Navalny’s ill-wishers hacked his email last year, the question arose of how selfless Navalny’s fight against crooks and thieves was. From his correspondence with political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, it follows that in January 2010, Belkovsky, for $50,000, ordered Navalny to campaign against Oleg Deripaska’s UC Rusal - the company was just conducting an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Over the course of several days, Navalny published several posts on a current topic (why you shouldn’t buy UC Rusal shares) on his “live journal”, an article in Vedomosti and on Slon.ru.

Navalny and Belkovsky unanimously say that this particular part of their correspondence is fake. But when asked whether Navalny received money from Belkovsky, they unexpectedly give an affirmative answer: he received it, but not for the campaign against Deripaska, but for the creation of the “People” movement.

“Between 2006 and 2008, I personally helped Navalny with money,” recalls Belkovsky. “I was in search of people who could replace the Putin generation of politicians. Therefore, I helped without any pragmatic reason. I helped many people. Give some money for the national democratic project and the “People” movement - that’s all the help.” Not much - this is “several tens of thousands of dollars,” Belkovsky refused to name the exact amount. “I don’t think this amount exceeds $20,000,” Navalny clarifies. “The money went to conferences, visits of people, etc.”

Belkovsky met Navalny when he was still working at Yabloko, seeing in him “a suitable person to become a politician of the new generation,” the political scientist recalls. “Belkovsky came up to me and said: you’re doing everything right, well done, and somehow we became friends with him on this topic. He introduced me to a lot of people,” says Navalny.

Belkovsky became famous in 2003. On June 9, the Council for National Strategy, which he founded, published a report, “State and Oligarchy,” from which it followed that the oligarchs were preparing a coup d’etat, and the head of YUKOS, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was perhaps the main conspirator. Platon Lebedev was arrested in the same June, and Khodorkovsky at the end of October. Former top managers of YUKOS are convinced that the report to Belkovsky was ordered by Igor Sechin (then deputy head of the presidential administration, the mastermind of the YUKOS case).

Belkovsky does not comment on his relationship with Sechin. “Belkovsky is considered by many to be an agent, but he only gave me money for Narod,” Navalny insists.

Advocate

Navalny became a lawyer in 2009, when he worked in the Kirov region - Governor Nikita Belykh (former chairman of the Union of Right Forces) called him as a freelance adviser. As a freelancer, that is, without a salary, Navalny lived, as he says, on income from the legal practice of Allekta.

In Kirov, Navalny received the status of a lawyer - he passed the exams and joined the local chamber. “I simply, having considered everything, realized that it is much more profitable for me to become a lawyer - there are fewer taxes,” explains Navalny. “As a lawyer, I now pay 13% income tax and fixed insurance rates. And if I just have Romashka LLC, I must pay income tax, on dividends, etc."

Until recently, only one client of Navalny the lawyer was widely known - their family Kobyakovskaya factory, from which, according to a certificate circulating on the Internet, he received 750,000 rubles in 2010. Navalny does not comment on the amount, but says this about the case: “At this factory there is a store, which is located on the Minsk highway. The minka is being reconstructed, the store is being demolished. This road had to be sued. Well, when the facility is demolished, they must be paid compensation. Therefore, they I need some kind of work, I do it - they pay."

Last November, Navalny got a more serious client - Ivlev, already mentioned above, invited him to become his lawyer. Why did he hire Navalny, especially considering that he already has one lawyer - Konstantin Rivkin? "He needs my expertise, besides, he just wants to take famous person“- explains Navalny. “The YUKOS case, in which I am accused, is political. So why shouldn’t I build a defense through politics?” explains Ivlev.

Navalny’s fee, according to Ivlev, is $10,000 in rubles at the Central Bank exchange rate per month, which “by New York standards is more than a modest amount. This is not the money with which one makes a revolution.”

Ivlev - co-founder and executive director of the American Institute modern Russia, created in 2010. The second co-founder is the son of Mikhail Khodorkovsky Pavel, who is also the president of the institute. The institute's website says that Pavel Khodorkovsky created it to continue the work of his father, who established the foundation in 2001." Open Russia". “Our mission,” says the institute’s website, “is to promote democratic values ​​and institutions and engage civil society in the development of the rule of law and freedoms in Russia through grant programs.”

One of the institute's trustees is Margery Kraus, founder of APCO Worldwide, a Washington-based consulting company, which conducts lobbying campaigns around the world. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as well as Badri Patarkatsishvili’s widow Inna Gudavadze, resorted to the services of APCO Worldwide.

The institute does not disclose sponsors. A source close to Mikhail Khodorkovsky says that Khodorkovsky was the first sponsor. “In my opinion, Khodorkovsky Sr. is aware that Navalny is now my lawyer, and supports this decision,” says Ivlev. “But this is my personal money. Neither Khodorkovsky nor the Institute of Modern Russia has anything to do with it.” “Believe it or not: I was surprised to learn about this fact [that Ivlev invited Navalny] from his lawyers,” Khodorkovsky told Vedomosti.

According to Navalny, to provide for his personal needs, he needs two or three clients like Ivlev: “I have few expenses.”

Public figure and investment activist. Advisor to the Governor of the Kirov Region and head of the Foundation for Supporting Initiatives of the Governor of the Kirov Region since 2009. Co-chairman of the National Russian Liberation Movement "People" since 2007. In 2004-2007 he was deputy chairman of the Moscow branch of the Russian United Democratic Party "Yabloko", in 2007 he was expelled from the party for nationalism.

Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny was born on June 4, 1976 in a military town - the village of Butyn, Odintsovo district, Moscow region. In 1993 he graduated from Alabinsk high school in the military village of Kalininets in the vicinity of the village of Taraskovo near Moscow. In the same year (according to other sources - in 1992) he moved to Moscow.

In 1993-1998, Navalny studied at the Faculty of Law Russian University Friendship of Peoples (RUDN), in 1999-2001 at the Faculty of Finance and Credit of the Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation, from which he graduated, in my own words, specialty " securities and stock exchange business" (while some sources claim that such a specialty was not available at the academy).

While still studying at the academy, in 2000 Navalny joined the Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko. At the end of 2001, he worked at the headquarters for the elections of deputies of the Moscow City Duma (at the same time, he was a member of one of the district election commissions as a representative not of Yabloko, but of the Union of Right Forces party).

In 2002, Navalny was elected a member of the regional council of the Moscow branch of Yabloko. In 2003, he already led the Yabloko election campaign in the elections to State Duma in Moscow. The sources noted that in Moscow at these elections Yabloko showed best result among all regional headquarters.

In April 2004, Navalny became the chief of staff of the Moscow branch of Yabloko and remained in this position until February 2007. In addition, from 2004 until the summer of 2007, he was deputy chairman of the Moscow branch of the party (the branch at that time was headed by Sergei Mitrokhin).

In the summer of 2004, Navalny was elected executive secretary of the Committee for the Defense of Muscovites, created under Yabloko, which opposed infill development (Mitrokhin was also the chairman of the committee). In 2006-2007, Navalny was a member of the federal council of Yabloko.

In August 2005, Navalny was included in the Public Council of the Central Administrative District of Moscow, created as “an instrument of public influence on decision-making by government structures” on the eve of the start of the election campaign for the Moscow city ​​council. In November of the same year, Navalny became one of the initiators of the creation of the Youth Public Chamber, an organization whose goal was the participation of young people in legislative initiatives. At the Moscow City Duma elections themselves, held in December 2005, Navalny ran on the Yabloko-United Democrats list. At this time, he, in particular, met one of the leaders of the Union of Right Forces party, Nikita Belykh, who participated in the list.

In 2005, Navalny was one of the organizers of the youth social movement"YES! - Democratic Alternative" (Maria Gaidar and Natalya Morar were also among the organizers of the movement). In this movement he participated in a number of projects. In particular, Navalny was mentioned as the coordinator of the project "YES! For media freedom!" (the main coordinator of the project, however, was Gaidar) and the “Police with the People” project. In connection with the movement's law enforcement project, Navalny and his associates conducted raids on police stations to check whether the rights of detainees were being observed.

At the beginning of 2006, Navalny, Gaidar and Sergei Kazakov created another project - “Political Debates”, within which public meetings between politicians and public figures were organized in clubs. Already the second debate, in which, in particular, the press secretary of the Nashi movement Robert Schlegel and the leader of the Yabloko youth organization Ilya Yashin participated, caused a great resonance in the press. In addition to the “Political Debates” itself, Navalny also organized a parallel project for the TVC channel - the “Fight Club” program. In April 2007, after only two episodes showing high ratings, the program was unexpectedly taken off the air. Navalny himself linked the closure of Fight Club to the existence of a “stop list” compiled by the authorities that prohibited the appearance of certain people on television.

In the fall of 2006, the press indicated Navalny as one of the organizers of the “Russian March” prepared by nationalist organizations, but he himself categorically rejected this. Nevertheless, Navalny participated as an observer in meetings of the organizing committee of the demonstration, explaining this by protecting the right of citizens to peaceful assembly.

On June 23, 2007, Navalny became one of the founders of the “People” movement, whose ideology was “democratic nationalism” - the fight for democracy and the rights of Russians. Navalny, as well as writers Sergei Gulyaev and Zakhar Prilepin, were elected co-chairs of the movement. Navalny subsequently described himself as a “national democrat.”

In connection with his participation in the creation of the “People” movement, already in July 2007, Navalny was forced to resign from his post as deputy head of the Moscow “Yabloko”. At the same time, the question began to be discussed that Navalny should have left the party. In December 2007, at a meeting of the party bureau, Navalny demanded “the immediate resignation of the party chairman and all his deputies, the re-election of at least 70 percent of the bureau” and was expelled from Yabloko with the wording “for causing political damage to the party, in particular, for nationalist activities.” .

In 2007, Navalny also twice appeared in scandals related to the “political debates” he conducted. In February, at a debate between publicists Yulia Latynina and Maxim Kononenko, radical nationalists appeared, led by Maxim Martsinkevich (nicknamed “Cleaver”), to whom Navalny gave the floor, confirming his nationalist beliefs. Nevertheless, after the debate, Navalny was among those who filed a police report against Martsinkevich. In October, after a debate between Gaidar and the writer Eduard Bagirov, which was accompanied by a violation of order in the hall, Navalny fired a traumatic pistol at car mechanic Timur Teziev. According to Navalny, Teziev tried to disrupt the debate: his victim was allegedly sent by “the Kremlin structures responsible for” domestic policy“and “work with youth,” in connection with which even the name of President Vladimir Putin’s assistant Vladislav Surkov was mentioned. According to some sources, after a six-month trial, the case of Navalny’s attack on Teziev was dropped.

Beginning in the second half of the 2000s, Navalny (who once traded shares professionally) became interested in issues of minority shareholder rights. In 2008, he began to actively engage in so-called “investment activism.” Navalny bought small blocks of shares large companies- in particular, he was a minority shareholder of Surgutneftegaz, Transneft, Rosneft, Gazpromneft, TNK-BP, Sberbank and VTB - and then demanded, as a shareholder, disclosure of information about the activities of management, from which Shareholder returns and company transparency could be affected. At the same time, Navalny indicated the Gazprom corporation as his main opponent. In particular, he achieved the initiation of a criminal case against one of the corporation's managers.

Navalny himself noted the futility of investment activism due to the lack of independence of the law enforcement system. He lost lawsuits demanding disclosure of information filed against Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz and Transneft. At the same time, in 2009, thanks to Navalny, a criminal case was opened against the managers of Mezhregiongaz for causing damage to the company when selling gas to intermediaries, and details of the unprofitable purchase of VTB Leasing drilling rigs were revealed, as a result of which the director of the bank was forced to resign . In December 2009, Navalny, together with the Russian version Forbes magazine organized a project to protect the rights of minority shareholders - the Center for Shareholder Protection. Thanks to these activities, in the same month the Vedomosti newspaper named Navalny “private person of the year.” At the same time, he was recognized as “person of the year” by the stock exchange review “Stock In Focus”.

Back in early 2009, shortly after his appointment as governor of the Kirov region, Nikita Belykh appointed Navalny as his freelance adviser. In the summer of the same year, Navalny headed the non-profit organization Foundation for Support of Initiatives of the Governor of the Kirov Region.

Navalny is an active blogger. Among his musical preferences, he indicated the group Rage Against The Machine, and also drew parallels between himself and the famous rock musician Yegor Letov. Navalny's wife's name is Yulia. In 2008, the couple had a son.