Kremlin-linked businessman Evgeny Prigozhin allegedly donated one million rubles to Navalny’s shuttered Anti-Corruption Foundation

Evgeny Prigozhin, the catering magnate notorious for his close ties to the Kremlin and purported links to the Wagner PMC, allegedly donated one million rubles (nearly $19,000) to opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s recently closed non-profit organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).

“We thought: [do we] return it or send it to a charity? We decided that even the thought of money earned from the supply of rotten meat to kindergartens and schools laying in our account [made us] sick, so we sent the thief back his transfer,” Navalny wrote on Twitter.

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 St. Petersburg businessman Evgeny Prigozhin. Concord underwent a change of ownership in the fall of 2019.

On July 20, Navalny announced the dissolution of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. The decision came after a company allegedly linked to Prigozhin won an 88-million-ruble ($1.67-million) lawsuit against Navalny, FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol, and the FBK.