Profile - Alexei Navalny
Lucy Ash profiles the Russian lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who this week topped a ballot to elect leaders of the opposition to President Putin.
He came to prominence as a leader during the anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow last December, the biggest such rallies since the end of the Soviet Union.
He has also been fighting against corruption through a website that invites the public to report suspected cases to the police or prosecutors.
One of his tactics, was to become a minority shareholder in major Russian oil companies, banks, and ministries to ask awkward questions about holes in state finances. Those holes are huge. Last year Dmitri Medvedev - then President now PM - said that a trillion roubles-thirty-three billion dollars- disappears annually on government contracts.
Aleksey Navalny's anti graft campaign has won him popularity across a wide spectrum of Russian society, including nationalists with far right connections. This has unsettled many of more liberal supporters. And in a week when three other opposition activists have been charged with causing mass unrest, does he have what it takes to challenge the tough man in the Kremlin?
Producer Arlene Gregorius.
Published on Saturday, 27th October 2012.
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