Opposition infighting: Navalny allies hit back at Katz

Alexei Navalny’s The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) — run by the late opposition leader’s allies in exile —  last week accused the wife of Maxim Katz, a popular opposition blogger, of earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from working with companies close to the Russian authorities. The investigation has prompted another scandal among Russia’s fractured opposition, which has long since abandoned any pretence of unity.

• The FBK investigated the Avtorskiye Media agency, co-founded by Yekaterina Patulina, the wife of Maxim Katz, a former municipal politician turned opposition blogger. Navalny’s supporters claim that the entire business operates not through the agency, but through Patulina’s personal legal entity. According to them, she works with the National Media Group which, among other things, owns Russia’s largest TV channels (its board of directors is led by Alina Kabayeva, the alleged mother of Vladimir Putin’s children), VK and Gazprom Media, which owns the country’s leading entertainment channels. Her other client was Positive Technologies, a contractor for defense holding Rostec, which is under US and EU sanctions, the FBK alleged.
• Patulina has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for her work with various clients over the past few years — money that went into the accounts of her personal legal entity, the FBK claimed. “Despite the fact that Katz is not formally a founder of Avtorskiye Media it’s clear that he is actively involved and it’s obvious that he lives off the money from this business. This is their family income,” the investigation said. Katz himself declined to comment on the investigation, saying that he would not discuss “ongoing Russian affairs” related to his family.
• Commentators described the investigation as the FBK’s response to Katz’s accusations that the foundation had close ties to fugitive Russian bankers involved in fraud (you can read more about that here). 
• Katz was accused of having a clear conflict of interests. “Putin’s opponent gets hundreds of thousands of dollars in his family budget directly from the Kremlin,” was how one described it. 

Why the world should care

Investigations into the business affairs of a leading opposition blogger’s family are not the kind of content that many expect to see from a foundation that used to highlight corruption among Putin’s inner circle and Russia’s most influential oligarchs. However, it seems that Russia’s opposition movements are more engaged in this kind of “internal” power struggle than any effort to unite against a common enemy.