MOSCOW, August 12 (RAPSI) – The Prosecutor General’s Office released a statement on Monday saying that opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s campaign for the Moscow Mayoral race has been financed from abroad.

The statement claims that over 300 foreign citizens and entities, as well as 46 anonymous backers transferred money to fund Navalny’s campaign through Yandex-money service. Transfers were made from the IP range of the US, Finland, the UK, Switzerland, and Canada.

Under Russian law, an election campaign can be funded by the candidate himself, and donations from the citizens and entities. Foreign citizens and entities, however, are prohibited from making donations to Russian election funds.

The Prosecutor General’s Office forwarded its findings to the Interior Ministry which may initiate a criminal case upon consideration.

Moscow's mayoral election will take place on September 8. Acting Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who is supported by the ruling United Russia party, is the clear frontrunner in the race according to recent polls.

Navalny reported earlier this week that Sobyanin's underage daughter owns a large apartment in a prestigious building in central Moscow that the family could not afford on income they specified in their publicly disclosed income declarations.

The Kremlin said the apartment was granted to Sobyanin, a native of the Siberian Tyumen Region, during his tenure at the presidential administration in the 2000s, but opposition activists still questioned the legality of the boon. Navalny was convicted in July of timber embezzlement stemming from a stint spent serving as an advisor to Kirov governor Nikita Belykh between May and September 2009. According to investigators, Navalny organized the theft of over 10,000 cubic meters of timber during that period in collusion with Vyatka Timber Company Director Pyotr Ofitserov and Kirovles CEO Vyacheslav Opalyov.

He was sentenced to five years in a penal colony, and his co-accused Pyotr Ofitserov received a four-year sentence. The two were held liable to pay a one million ruble fine between them. In a surprise move, however, he was released following the conviction pending his appeal, which has been filed.

Prosecutors had filed a request for he and Ofitserov to be released from custody pending appeal based on the fact of Navalny's candidacy for Moscow mayor, and the concern that he should be afforded the same rights as other candidates.

In addition to the Kirovles embezzlement case, investigators have opened three other criminal cases against Navalny, on charges of embezzlement from a political party, deceiving an international cosmetics company, and illegally conspiring to privatize a central Russia distillery.