Who is Oleg Navalny, Alexei’s brother, who is wanted by the Russian authorities?

In the Navalny family, I ask for my brother. At 40, Oleg has less media coverage than his brother, but is just as politicized. Following the death of Alexei Navalny in the Kharp penal colony in Siberia (Russia) on February 16, his younger brother again became the subject of a report by Russian authorities, according to information published by the TASS news agency on Tuesday.

Authorities did not tell the agency the reason for including him on the list of wanted persons. They simply indicated that a new criminal case had been opened against Oleg Navalny, without further details.

Convicted in the Yves Rocher case

Oleg Navalny, born in 1983, worked at Russian Post until 2013. He was deputy director of automated sorting centers, then first deputy director of the express delivery company EMS Russian Post, and then, together with his brother Alexey, became involved in the Yves Rocher case.

On December 30, 2014, he was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison on charges of fraud and money laundering. He was released from prison on June 29, 2018, upon completion of his sentence. Alexei Navalny received the same suspended sentence.

Oleg Navalny’s last legal sentence was dated 2021: he received a one-year suspended sentence and was found guilty in a “health case.” According to Russian authorities, in January 2021 he organized a demonstration through social networks in violation of sanitary rules in force during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, Oleg Navalny was placed under house arrest from January to April 2021 and forced to wear an electronic bracelet for several months, as he showed on Instagram.

Wanted since 2022.

But, as the independent media outlet Mediazona reports, his inclusion on the wanted list has no connection with the death of his brother. In fact, his name had been there for months. On February 13, an article was published on the investigation website, which listed all the people registered in these lists in which he had already appeared. In addition, the information contained in his wanted notice allows us to establish that he is not involved in the new case, contrary to allegations by the Russian authorities.

As part of his sentence handed down in 2021, he was forced to report regularly to the authorities as part of a judicial review. What he never did, reports TASS. It is therefore logical for him to be placed on the prison services’ wanted list from 2022, which are responsible for ensuring the proper implementation of post-conviction measures.

However, Mediazona adds that not a single new case has been added to its case, and can prove this thanks to the phone number indicated in Oleg Navalny’s case in the “contacts” section: we are talking about prison services (within the framework of unauthorized access). compliance with judicial review) rather than the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is nevertheless responsible for monitoring new cases.

Precedent in another case proves that if a new criminal case were indeed brought against Oleg Navalny, then the figures of the two authorities would be mentioned to indicate two separate and unrelated cases. Thus, this is more of a publicity stunt by the Russian authorities than actual prosecutions. However, few doubt that Oleg Navalny is now, like the rest of the family, in the sight of the authorities.