Putin’s chef vows to ruin poisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny

A businessman close to the Kremlin has declared his intention to financially ruin the opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Alexei Navalny takes part in a march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow in February. Picture: AFP

A businessman close to the Kremlin has declared his intention to financially ruin the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma in hospital after a suspected poisoning.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, who allegedly bankrolls the Wagner group of Russian mercenary fighters and the St Petersburg internet “troll factory”, said he hoped to “unrobe and unshoe” Mr Navalny and his associates.

“Of course, if Comrade Navalny goes to meet his maker then I do not intend to persecute him in this world,” said the tycoon, who is often called Putin’s chef because of his catering contracts. He added: “If Navalny survives then he must answer under all severity of the Russian law.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, often called Putin’s chef because of his catering contracts, could push for a criminal prosecution of Alexei Navalny for non-payment of a debt.

Mr Prigozhin, 59, gave the statement as it was announced that he had bought a 87,658,461 rouble ($1.6m) debt owed by Mr Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) to the food company Moskovsky Shkolnik.

The foundation was ordered to pay the sum in libel damages by a court last year. Mr Navalny and his associates had alleged that Moskovsky Shkolnik caused scores of cases of dysentery among pupils and teachers because of the poor quality of meals it supplied to Moscow schools.

Mr Navalny said last month he was dissolving FBK because of the crippling damages ruling, but would continue its activities under another name. However, as owner of the debt, Mr Prigozhin could push for a criminal prosecution of Mr Navalny, 44, and his associates if they do not pay up.

Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer on Mr Navalny’s team, spearheaded the school meals investigation, and faced months of harassment as a result. After publishing an earlier report into alleged corruption in Mr Prigozhin’s family in 2016, an unknown assailant plunged a syringe into her husband’s thigh outside a block of flats in Moscow. He collapsed and went into convulsions. Doctors said that he had been poisoned with a suspected animal tranquilliser and could have died.

Mr Prigozhin denied any involvement in the attack, suggesting that Ms Sobol had “pricked her husband’s bum herself during role-playing games”.

Mr Navalny is in an induced coma at Charite hospital in Berlin after being flown there in an air ambulance from Siberia on Saturday. He collapsed on a plane as he flew to Moscow on Thursday morning. His colleagues believe he was poisoned by a toxin put in a cup of tea he drank at the airport.

Leonid Volkov, Mr Navalny’s chief of staff, said on Wednesday that “the worst is behind us”, and the activist was safe as he underwent treatment.

The Times