Court marshals seize Alexey Navalny’s Moscow apartment

Court marshals have seized the apartment opposition figure Alexey Navalny owns in Moscow.

According to his press secretary Kira Yarmysh, the seizure is in connection to the debt owed to the company “Moskovsky Shkolnik,” which successfully sued Alexey Navalny, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (the FBK), and FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol for roughly 88 million rubles (about $1.14 million by today’s exchange rates) in compensation over damages to its business reputation in October 2019.

Yarmysh claims that court marshals announced a ban on registry actions on Navalny’s share in the apartment on August 27. “This means the apartment can’t be sold, donated or mortgaged,” she explained. Navalny’s accounts have also been frozen.

Accounts belonging to Sobol and the FBK have been frozen in connection to the claim in the past.

In early 2019, the FBK published an investigative report stating that Kremlin-linked catering magnate Evgeny Prigozhin owns “Moskovsky Shkolnik” (he denies this) and accused the company of spreading dysentery in Moscow kindergartens and schools in December 2018.

Moskovsky Shkolnik sued Navalny, Sobol, and FBK in civil court for 500 million rubles ($6.5 million) in damages to its business reputation. In October 2019, a court awarded the company roughly 88 million rubles. The ruling was so massive that Navalny announced in July 2020 that FBK would be forced to liquidate and reopen as a new legal entity called the Rights’ Defense Foundation.

In August 2020, Evgeny Prigozhin acquired the rights to the 88-million-ruble debt awarded to Moskovsky Shkolnik. According to a statement by the Prigozhin-affiliated “Concord” catering company, Prigozhin bought the debt with the intention of “reducing this group of dishonest people to pennilessness and shoelessness.”