MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian state investigators said on Tuesday they had opened a new criminal case against Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, accusing him of spending money collected from the public for organisations he is involved with on his personal needs.
Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s leading critics, was airlifted to Germany for treatment in August after collapsing on a plane in what Germany and other Western nations say was an attempt to murder him with a Novichok nerve agent.
Russia has said it has seen no evidence he was poisoned and has denied any involvement in the incident.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Darya Korsunskaya; writing by Polina Devitt; editing by Andrew Osborn)