Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation wants felony charges against Oleg Deripaska, saying the billionaire bribed police to prosecute a ‘sex trainer’
Opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has asked Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee to press felony charges against the billionaire Oleg Deripaska. In a statement shared online on Tuesday, Navalny’s organization said Deripaska and several of his associates are responsible for “ordering” and “bankrolling” a prostitution case against the “sex trainers” Anastasia Vashukevich (also known as “Nastya Rybka”) and Alexander Kirillov (“Alex Leslie”). According to FBK, Deripaska and his associates committed bribery, while the police officers pursuing the case accepted bribes and unlawfully prosecuted Vashukevich and Kirillov.
Navalny’s team also wants a new prostitution investigation launched against Deripaska, arguing that the billionaire organized the “systematic casting, logistics, accommodations, and prostitution services” for himself and his associates, “including state officials for the purposes of bribery.”
On January 22, a Moscow court unexpectedly freed the “sex trainers” Anastasia Vashukevich (also known as “Nastya Rybka”) and Alexander Kirillov (“Alex Leslie”). The two were arrested on January 17 at Sheremetyevo Airport in connection with a prostitution investigation.
What's the evidence that Deripaska meddled in the “Rybka” case?
Since February 2018, when the Anti-Corruption Foundation first revealed that Deripaska hosted Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko, along with several “escort girls,” aboard his yacht in August 2016, off the shores of Norway, the organization’s main claim has been that the trip constituted a bribe to a state official. The FBK report was based largely on footage from the yacht shared on Instagram by Anastasia Vashukevich.
In the United States, the story has attracted attention largely because one of the videos features Deripaska blaming Victoria Nuland for U.S.-Russian tensions, which Navalny claims could be evidence that Deripaska was acting as a middle man between Paul Manafort and the Kremlin.