During his speech in Oslo on Friday, the Russian journalist spoke of the fate of the opponent of Vladimir Putin, still imprisoned for fraud. He also accused, without naming it, the French cosmetics company of having played a role in this affair.
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The Yves Rocher company again accused of being partly responsible for the fate of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny. On the occasion of the presentation of his Nobel Peace Prize, Friday, December 10, in Oslo, Dimitri Muratov, the director of the Novaya Gazeta’s editorial staff, touched on most of the hot human rights issues in Russia today and called for a minute’s silence for the journalists killed. He also spoke about the anti-corruption activist imprisoned for almost a year and referred, without naming it, to the role of the French company Yves Rocher.
The fraud case which led Alexeï Navalny to be in prison today began in 2012. The Russian subsidiary of Yves Rocher had at the time lodged a complaint against one of its suppliers, a logistics company that belonged to to Alexeï Navalny and his brother. Charges of embezzlement seemed very vague at the time. Moreover, Yves Rocher ended up admitting that in reality the Navalny company had not harmed it.
But Russian justice has started, as Dimitri Muratov recalled on Friday in his speech in Oslo: “The opponent Alexeï Navalny is imprisoned on the basis of a false accusation by the CEO of the Russian subsidiary of a major French cosmetics brand. This accuser lodged a complaint but he was not summoned to court and he did not he is not a civil party and Alexei Navalny is behind bars. The cosmetics maker has chosen to stay away from this case in the hope that it will not harm the scent of the company’s products. “
What Muratov seems to say is that Yves Rocher could have, at the very least, tried to exonerate the opponent. But the company fell silent. For some analysts, it is possible that the Russian subsidiary of the French group was instrumentalized by the security services in this affair.