Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has announced the dissolution of his non-profit organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).
The decision came after the company “Moskovsky Shkolnik” — allegedly affiliated with Kremlin-linked St. Petersburg businessman Evgeny Prigozhin — filed an 88 million ruble ($1.67 million) lawsuit against Navalny, FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol, and the FBK.
“It’s a huge amount and I don't even see the point of collecting it. Until the end of the Putin authorities we’ll have to live with blocked accounts,” Navalny wrote on his blog.
Our name is dear to us but as I have said many times: the FBK is not an office and it’s not a piece of paper from the Justice Ministry. The FBK is people. It’s those who come here to fight corruption, and you, who support it. We will move to another legal entity and let Putin and Prigozhin choke on this.
At the beginning of 2019, the FBK released an investigation that accused the restaurant and catering enterprise Concord of supplying contaminated food to Moscow schools and kindergartens in December 2018, causing a dysentery outbreak. At the time, the company belonged to Evgeny Prigozhin, who is notorious for his close ties to the Kremlin and alleged linked to the Wagner private military company. Concord underwent a change of ownership in the fall of 2019.