MOSCOW, November 12 (RAPSI) – Moscow’s Simonovsky District Court on Thursday upheld imposition of a 100,000-ruble ($1,300) fine on director of Alexey Navalny’s foundation Ivan Zhdanov for refusal to delete video defaming businessman Alisher Usmanov, the court’s press service told RAPSI.

In late July, Zhdanov was fined for publishing posts on the Instagram account of  Navalny’s foundation without noting that the materials had been distributed by a foreign agent. He was found guilty of breaching the order of the operation of an NGO operating under the label of a foreign agent.

In early July, the court also fined Navalny’s associate 100,000 rubles for a similar violation.

In early November 2019, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court refused to overturn the Justice Ministry’s October decision to include Navalny’s organization in the list of NGOs acting as foreign agents.

The Justice Ministry established the fact of the organization’s conforming to the “foreign agent criteria” during the monitoring of its activity conducted by the Justice Ministry’s Moscow Main Directorate, the Ministry’s official website informed at that time.

The decision to give Navalny’s foundation the status of a foreign agent was made based on evidence of its funding from abroad, the acting director of the Justice Ministry’s NGO affairs department Vladimir Titov told journalists.