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Bailiffs Search Headquarters Of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation In Moscow

MOSCOW -- Officers of Russia's Federal Bailiffs Service (FSSP) have searched the premises of outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) in Moscow.

FBK Director Ivan Zhdanov said on Twitter that the searches were conducted on November 5.

A FSSP statement said that the FBK headquarters were searched due to a probe launched against Zhdanov over his failure to "follow a court order." It gave no further explanation.

Zhdanov wrote later on Twitter that he was informed that the searches were connected to a court ruling obliging him to pay 29 million rubles ($369,000) for an unspecified misdeed.

Earlier in July, Navalny announced that a court ruling against his company had forced him to liquidate FBK and its bank accounts to prevent the seizure of cash by bailiffs, adding that he registered a new company in order to continue his corruption investigations.

In August, bailiffs seized Navalny's apartment in Moscow after he lost a defamation lawsuit in October 2019 involving a businessman with close ties to President Vladimir Putin.

A Moscow court ordered Navalny, the FBK, and the group's lawyer, Lyubov Sobol, to pay a total of 87.6 million rubles ($1.15 million) split evenly among them to a catering company, Moscow Schoolchild, for defamation.

Navalny is currently in Germany recovering after an August poisoning attack in Siberia with a military-grade nerve agent belonging to the Novichok group, a Soviet-made chemical weapon, which he blames on the Kremlin.