Russia seeks 10 years in prison for Putin foe

Russian prosecutors today asked a court to sentence President Vladimir Putin's chief foe to 10 years in prison, but the defiant opposition leader vowed to keep up his fight against the Kremlin regime.
Alexei Navalny, 38, rose to prominence with his investigations of official corruption and played a leading role in organizing massive anti-Putin street protests in 2011 and 2012. But within a month of the government's May 2012 crackdown on the opposition, investigators slapped Navalny with several criminal cases.
In a trial last summer, Navalny was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to prison, but he was released the next day after thousands of people protested in the streets of Moscow. He was given a suspended sentence instead.

In their closing arguments in a separate trial in a Moscow courthouse, prosecutors asked a judge today to convict Navalny and imprison him for nine years, with an additional year added because of the prior conviction.
Navalny and his brother Oleg are being prosecuted for allegedly defrauding a French cosmetics company.
The company, Yves Rocher, wrote a complaint to investigators, but its representatives have insisted throughout the trial that there never were any damages. The French executive who wrote the complaint also left Russia shortly afterwards and never attended the hearings.

The prosecutors, who demanded eight years in prison for Oleg Navalny, insisted that the brothers forced the company "into disadvantageous contracts" and defrauded them of 26 million rubles (currently worth about USD 440,000).

Alexei Navalny's attorney, Olga Mikhailova, argued that "no evidence has been presented in court, in either of the episodes, that the crime even took place."
Oleg Navalny said the indictment contains conflicting statements, including the dates of the alleged fraud and laundry of its proceeds. He also said the prosecutors never said where money that allegedly had been stolen could have gone.
In today's court hearing, he rejected the charges against him as a payback for his investigations of official corruption, and he dismissed them as "nonsense from the first to the last word."
The opposition leader said, "I'm standing here and I'm ready to stand up here as long as necessary in order to prove to you that I won't tolerate these lies."

Navalny said,"I believe people have a legitimate right for an uprising against this unfair, corrupted government, this junta that has stolen everything."
The verdict is expected on January 15.