Navalny’s ally arrested in absentia for street art theft

A Moscow court has authorized the arrest of Nikita Kulachenkov, an ally of opposition politician Alexei Navalny and an employee at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. The arrest has been authorized in connection with the theft of the street art painting titled “Good Bad Person.”

Kulchenkov is currently abroad, thus the arrest has been authorized in absentia.

According to investigators, Nikita Kulachenkov and his colleague Georgy Alburov from Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation stole the painting titled “Bad Good Person” from a fence in the town of Vladimir (200 kilometers, or 120 miles east of Moscow) and gave it to Navalny for his birthday.

A Vladimir court found Alburov guilty of the theft in April, and he has been sentenced to 240 hours of community service.

The case of the “Bad Good Person” theft was initiated in the summer of 2014. The painting was found in Navalny’s home during a search in connection to another case.

The artist Sergei Sotov, the author of the painting who placed it on a public fence in Vladimir, claimed in court that the disappearance of the painting resulted in great material losses. Before the court hearing, Sotov said in an interview that he estimates the cost of the painting to be 100 rubles ($2) and reported that his paintings are often taken by passers-by from public places.

For more on the story, see The case of the Bad Good Person