Putin rival guilty but can still run in poll

Embezzlement verdict against opponent a ‘scam’

MOSCOW // Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was found guilty of embezzlement yesterday in what he said was a politically motivated trial that ended his run for election against Vladimir Putin. Navalny’s campaign manager, Leonid Volkov, said he would continue to try to be confirmed as a candidate despite the verdict but that he faced legal hurdles.

Although his conviction bars him from running for office, the Russian constitution allows anyone who is not in prison to stand for election.

The verdict came after a retrial of a 2013 fraud hearing, in which he was also found guilty. But the European Court of Human Rights last year quashed that verdict on the grounds that Navalny and his co-defendant, businessman Pyotr Ofitserov, did not have a fair trial. Russia’s supreme court ordered that Navalny and Ofitserov face a retrial.

The judge in the retrial has yet to give a sentence, although prosecutors asked for the same five- year sentence given in the original trial. The outcome seemed to be a foregone conclusion for Navalny, 40, a lawyer and Kremlin critic.

He and his lawyers said texts from both trials were identical.

Navalny spent only a night in prison before being released on a suspended sentence after the 2013 guilty verdict, a move observers said would allow him to run against the Kremlin’s candidate in the mayoral race to give it legitimacy.

The end of his trial comes as another member of Russia’s marginalised opposition, Vladimir Kara-Murza, is in a coma with organ failure after suffering acute poisoning last week, his wife said.