Moscow Court Rejects Navalny's Appeal In Dispute With Businessman Prigozhin

The Moscow City Court on Tuesday rejected Alexey Navalny's appeal against the ruling on the defamation case related to Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mogul's company Concord said

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 06th July, 2021) The Moscow City Court on Tuesday rejected Alexey Navalny's appeal against the ruling on the defamation case related to Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mogul's company Concord said.

The court had ordered that Navalny remove from the internet information that was deemed slanderous, publish a repudiation on the Navalny Live channel, and pay a 500,000 ruble ($6,800) fine.

"After consideration, the Moscow City Court determined to keep in force the previous ruling, to leave Navalny's appeal not granted, thereby confirming the validity of the initial claims," the company wrote on VKontakte.

Last October, Prigozhin's lawyers began filing a series of lawsuits against Navalny and his allies Lyubov Sobol, Leonid Volkov, Maksim Shevchenko and Vladimir Milov.

The catering tycoon's company explained that the reason for these appeals was "the publication of offensive statements containing slanderous information" about the businessman.

In 2019, Navalny, Sobol and the opposition's foundation were fined over 88 million rubles in total for alleging that a catering company, purportedly belonging to Prigozhin, had supplied low-quality food to schools and kindergartens under state contracts, as well as accusing the businessman of corruption and ties to private military companies.

Prigozhin's legal representative, Igor Yeliseyev, told Sputnik that most of these suits asked for 5-7 million rubles in damages in addition to the demand that slanderous materials be removed from the internet.