Week-ending 24 July 2020
On Monday, 20 July, Aleksei Navalny announced he was closing the Anti-Corruption Foundation which he heads. The Foundation is currently facing a lawsuit under which Evgeny Prigozhin, known to be close to the Kremlin and often nicknamed ‘Putin’s chef’, is seeking 88 million rubles ($1.2 million) in compensation from Navalny and his colleague Liubov Sobol for a video alleging a company he controls that provides food to schools and kindergartens did not meet sanitary standards. Navalny said the Foundation, which was listed as a ‘foreign agent’ NGO in October 2019, would be closed but its work would continue under another organisation. The authorities have previously also frozen the Foundation’s bank accounts and raided his nationwide political network, The Moscow Times reports.
