Court refuses to dismiss Kirovles embezzlement case

A Kirov court has dismissed a petition from the lawyers of oppositionist Alexei Navalny and Pyotr Ofitserov asking that the criminal case against the Kirovles production company be closed. The court ruled that the petition had been filed prematurely, as an indictment had not yet been made and the evidence not yet examined.

"Those violations that were revealed by the European Court of Human Rights were unavoidable. If the court redoes the trail now, it will find the same violations. Ofitserov was convicted for actions that are indistinguishable from [ordinary] business. Nothing can be made up here," said Svetlana Davydova, a lawyer in the case.

• In 2013, Alexey Navalny and Pyotr Ofitserov received suspended sentences on charges of embezzlement in the Kirovles case.
• In November 2016, Russia's Supreme Court overturned the suspended sentences issued against the trail's defendants in light of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which found no violations.
• A retrial for the Kirovles case began on December 5, 2016.