Oligarch Oleg Deripaska sues Navalny associate Maria Pevchikh for libel
The billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska has filed a lawsuit against Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF).
TASS reports that Deripaska is accusing Pevchikh of libel, for publicizing allegedly false information about his involvement in collateral auctions.
The lawsuit was filed on March 9. A preliminary hearing has been set for June 1, 2023.
This isn’t Deripaska’s first legal action against ACF and its investigative team. In October 2022, a court satisfied his complaint against Navalny, Pevchikh, and their associate Georgy Alburov, in connection with an exposé centered on Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Earlier, in 2018, Deripaska sued Navalny’s team for violating his privacy. Those allegations were tied to an ACF investigation based on the Instagram pictures posted by the Belarusian escort worker Nastya Rybka, who went sailing with Deripaska and Russia’s then deputy prime minister Sergey Prikhodko.
