MOSCOW, October 28 (RAPSI) – Moscow's Lyublinsky District Court has ruled that the telecom authority, Roskomnadzor, shall review an application for the registration of a media outlet submitted by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, RAPSI reports from the court on Tuesday.
The court did rule in favor of part of the lawsuit filed by Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, to overturn a Roskomnadzor decision to deny registering the Alexei Navalny News Agency.
At the same time, the court refused to instruct Roskomnadzor to register Navalny’s media outlet. The presiding judge said the issue could not be resolved within the given lawsuit.
A Roskomnadzor representative said at the hearing that they had not rejected the application but had simply returned the documents submitted for application purposes. Media outlets cannot be established by institutionalized persons in Russia, and Roskomnadzor had “reason to question Navalny’s legal status” when they received the documents. The telecom authority is willing to review the issue of registering Navalny’s media outlet after requesting the necessary information from the Federal Penal Service.
The plaintiff said that Alexei Navalny was establishing a media outlet to distribute information about the operation of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Alexei Navalny is a Russian opposition leader, the leader of the Party of Progress who came in a distant second in the Moscow mayoral elections last year with 27 percent of the vote. He has been involved in several criminal cases and became popular as the author of an anti-corruption blog.
Navalny is currently under house arrest under the Yves Roches Vostok embezzlement case. He denies all allegations and claims the cases have been politically motivated. Alexei Navalny was given a suspended sentence of five years for the embezzlement of funds from Kirovles Company.