Who is
Alexey Navalny

Alexey Navalny has two higher education degrees. In 1997, he graduated from the People's Friendship University of Russia (lawyer), and in 2001 — from the Finance Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation (economist). While studying for his second degree, he also worked as a lawyer.

Navalny founded the «Muscovite protection committee». This movement united over 100 initiative groups of opponents of the infill development. It achieved cancellation of a number of constructions that were harming the residents of nearby houses.

In 2008, Navalny first became known to the general public when he published the proofs of embezzlement of funds by Russia's major state corporations. As a lawyer, he founded the «Union of minority shareholders» and conducted the trials against Gazprom, Rosneft, Transneft and Gazpromneft to achieve transparency and accountability of these companies to the common shareholders.

The new step in Navalny's anti-corruption activities: he founded the «RosPil» project aimed at detecting the cases of fraud or unfair competition during the public procurements. «RosPil»'s team of lawyers has analyzed all the major expenditures of government bodies and state companies, identified and challenged in court hundreds of violations and developed a set of suggestions on improvement of the legislation regarding public procurements

Alexey Navalny created the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) — the largest independent public anti-corruption organization in the country. Right now, ACF has around 30 employees (lawyers, economists, etc.), and hundreds of volunteers across the country assist the foundation. ACF drafts bills aimed against corruption and officials' high-handedness, publishes investigations and documents revealing the truth about the illicit enrichment of deputies and ministers. Thanks to ACF's work, millions of Russians have learned the truth about the scale of high-handedness and thievery in the ruling circles.

Alexey Navalny drafted a bill that would forbid government officials to purchase foreign cars worth over 1.5 million rubles. For the first time in Russia's history, a bill has gathered 100 thousand electronic signatures in its support. As a result, Russian government adopted a regulation that forbids officials to purchase expensive cars at public expense.

Alexey Navalny participated in the Moscow mayoral elections. According to the official data, he received over 27% of the vote. He was supported by more Muscovites that the KPRF, LDPR, SR and Yabloko candidates combined. During his election campaign, Navalny conducted over 100 meetings with the voters, visited all the districts of Moscow and achieved solutions to thousands of Muscovites» problems.

Alexey Navalny and ACF took the fight against corruption to a new level by developing and launching a non-governmental legislative initiative on ratification by Russia of Article 20 of the UN Convention against corruption, which forbids illicit enrichment. The essence of this article is establishing compulsory control not only over the officials' incomes, but over their expenditures as well. According to Navalny's initiative, any official who is unable to explain the sources of the money he spends on yachts, mansions, private jets and other luxury items, must face prosecution. Over 100 thousand Russians expressed their support of Navalny's bill, and, although the officials still prefer to ignore this initiative, the public campaign against illicit enrichment continues.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation published the documentary «Chaika», in which Navalny proved that the Prosecutor General of Russia Yuri Chaika had connections to the Tsapok gang from Kushchovskaya village. The film tells about the activities of Chaika's entire family (which is essentially a criminal clan), his sons» sources of enrichment and the business empire they've built through illegal methods. The documentary has amassed 5 million views and received a number of professional prizes and awards.

Alexey Navalny expands the format of documentary videos about the corruption among the senior government officials. As such, he published materials about the Deputy PM Igor Shuvalov, whose wife transports her corgis to international dog shows on a private jet, while Shuvalov himself buys a luxury apartment in Moscow with a total area of over 1000 square meters. Navalny was also the first person to tell the whole country about the huge country house of Prime Minister Dmity Medvedev worth 30 billion rubles, which was built and presented to him by gas oligarchs.

Within the first 4 month of Alexey Navalny's election campaign, 19 campaign HQs were opened across Russia. Over 80,000 people signed up as volunteers. Over 380,000 signatures were gathered in support of Navalny's nomination, and over 39 million rubles of donations were gathered.

​In December, Alexey published his campaign platform. It consists of the policy article «Beautiful Russia of the Future», the description of suggested changes in various spheres and a set of videos about specific people, whose life can become better if Navalny gets elected. The main points of the platform are the fight against corruption, reduction of inequality, assistance in purchase of real estate, reduction of the mortgage rate, increase of medicine and healthcare expenditures, simplification of business operations and reduction of taxes for small business owners, deregulation and red tape reduction, redistribution of funds and authority in favor of the regions.

On December 25, CEC refused to register Navalny as a presidential candidate. The formal reason for that was the previous conviction on the fabricated «Kirovles case». CEC's decision was politically motivated and contradicted the Constitution. Navalny's HQ appealed against it to the Supreme Court, but it kept the decision in force. Immediately after the court session, Navalny declared a voter strike — an ongoing act of civil protest against the cheating at the elections.