Alexei Navalny, the Russian anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader, has accused the country’s prime minister of amassing property portfolio worth millions of pounds via questionable deals.
Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russian president between 2008 and 2012, uses a network of charities run by close associates to hide his control of assets including mansions, yachts, and even a vineyard, Mr Navalny claimed.
The allegations are made in a report released on Thursday by the Anti Corruption Foundation, a group led by Mr Navalny that investigates high-level graft.
The group claimed that examination of publicly available documents suggested a large proportion of the wealth had come from “donations” by some of Russia’s richest oligarchs to the charities.
Mr Medvedev’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the claims, but told Russia’s Ekho of Moscow radio station that they appeared to have an “election campaign character.”
Mr Navalny intends to run for president at elections next year. Last month he was found guilty of embezzlement, in a case supporters say was designed to prevent him from standing.
The Kremlin did not immediately comment on the claims.
Mr Navalny has made a series of allegations against high-ranking ministers in the past.
Last year he claimed Igor Shuvalov, a deputy prime minister, had spent over £7 million on ten flats on the same floor of an iconic Moscow skyscraper.
In 2015, the Anti Corruption Foundation published a report accusing Yury Chaika, Russia’s chief prosecutor, and his family of amassing wealth through questionable deals and having links with notorious crime families.
The revelations have led to speculation that Mr Navalny is being fed information by high-ranking politicians seeking to smear rivals in internal Kremlin power struggles.
Mr Medvedev is the most senior official Mr Navalny has produced a report about to date.
Ernest Valayev, the deputy chairman of the anti-corruption committee in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, said it was up to the government to check the claims made in the document.
“This is not the purview of the committee. It is a matter for the commission created by the presidential administration,” he told Ekho of Moscow radio.
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