Russian investigators on Tuesday charged popular protest leader Alexei Navalny with embezzlement in an old case that may put one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics in jail for 10 years. The Investigative Committee said in a statement that Navalny would also be barred from leaving Moscow during a probe into the opposition leader’s time as an unofficial adviser to a small deal struck by a regional government in 2009. The charismatic 36-year-old corporate lawyer by profession looked pale as he came out of closed hearings during which the charges against him were expanded substantially to include some of Russia’s gravest business crimes. “Something absolutely absurd and very strange has happened because they have completely changed the story behind the charge,” the prominent anti-corruption blogger told reporters. “I cannot imagine how the investigators can prove this. But probably they will prove it.” Navalny was already a cult figure with Russia’s growing Internet community for his campaign against state corruption when he helped spearhead the wave of protests that rocked the Kremlin in winter months.
