RUSSIA-NAVALNY-OFFICE-BUGGING
Moscow, August 6 (Interfax) – The police found a set of spying equipment at the Anti-Corruption Fund after the discovery of a tapping device, head of the fund Alexei Navalny says.
“In addition to an operating bugging device they have discovered a hidden video camera, power packs and data transmitters,” he twitted on Monday.
He noted that 12 police officers were working at the office of the fund.
The video footage that he posted in his blog on LiveJournal shows that the equipment was installed in the baseboard.
Earlier on Monday Navalny reported that a bug had been found in his office at the Anti-Corruption Fund.
“That is an official statement: a bug has been found at the Anti-Corruption Fund. We called the police,” he said and showed a photograph of the listening device.
The Moscow police department confirmed Navalny’s statement to Interfax.
The Main Investigative Department of the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Navalny in early May 2011. He was accused of causing property damage by fraud. Investigators said that Navalny, as an advisor to the Kirov regional governor, took a number of illegal actions in 2009 and the Kirovles regional state unitary enterprise in Kirov incurred significant damage as a result.
Investigation started in August 2009, and the Kirov regional department of the Investigative Committee found no formal elements of a crime in January 2011. The central staff of the Investigative Committee overruled the decision and sent the materials to its department in the Volga Federal District. The department refused to open the case due to the absence of formal elements of a crime in March 2011.
Yet the Investigative Committee heads cancelled the resolution of the Committee’s Kirov regional department to drop criminal charges against the blogger on May 29, 2012.
Navalny was charged with organizing embezzlement of Kirovles property on July 31, Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax.
Navalny made a written pledge not to leave Moscow.
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19:37:26 EET-2
