Anti-Corruption Foundation

In parallel, the founders of the fund are working on the idea of involving on a permanent basis professional lawyers and economists in the search for and suppression of corruption schemes in the public procurement system.[9] On 3 August 2019, the Investigative Committee of Russia (SKR) opened a criminal case against the FBK, accusing them of laundering ₽1 billion (c. US$15.5 mln).[13][14] In September 2019, various state-owned companies filed lawsuits against FBK for "organizing riots", and the courts partially satisfied them in the amount of ₽5 million (c. US$78 000).[16] On 9 October 2019, the FBK was declared a "foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation due to payments from the United States and Spain.In an interview with journalists, Yuriy Maslikhov stated that he had transferred the money from his PayPal account as an individual and he had been carrying out such donations earlier.[22][23] In February 2019, FBK published an investigation that reported that in December 2018, mass food poisoning of children occurred in kindergartens and schools in Moscow.In October 2019, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Navalny to pay 29.2 million rubles as compensation for lost profits and damage to professional reputation."[29] In response, Navalny aide Leonid Volkov stated: "Putin has just announced full-scale mass political repression in Russia.[31][32] On 9 June 2021, Vyacheslav Polyga, judge of Moscow City Court, upheld the administrative claim of the prosecutor of Moscow city Denis Popov and, rejecting all the petitions of the defense, decided[33] to recognize Anti-Corruption Foundation as an extremist organization, to liquidate it and to confiscate its assets; a similar decision had been taken against the Citizens' Rights Protection Foundation; the activity of the Alexei Navalny staff was prohibited (case No.3а-1573/2021).[35] According to advocate Ivan Pavlov, Alexei Navalny was not a party to the proceedings and the judge refused to give him such status; at the hearing, the prosecutor stated that the defendants are extremist organizations because they want a change of power in Russia and they promised to help participants of the protest with payment of administrative and criminal fines and with making complaints to the European Court of Human Rights.[40] In January 2021, former Russian banker Alexander Zheleznyak registered the international non-profit Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) in the United States.In case of an increase in voluntary contributions, it is planned to develop the staff of the fund's projects, giving a special role to the anti-corruption "RosPil".[9][71] FBK created its own media, 'Leviathan', in order to have a possibility to register for press conferences of Vladimir Putin and make a request to authorities.