Ivan Zhdanov announced his resignation as director of FBK

The Anti-Corruption Foundation is headed by its IT director Vladislav Romantsov

Ivan Zhdanov left the post of director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) after seven years of work. He will focus on developing his YouTube project “The Most Important” and plans to write a book about his work in the team of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Ivan Zhdanov announced his resignation via his Telegram channel. “For five years I defended FBK as best I could, an organization that suffered the greatest repression in modern Russia. He worked honestly and without fear. Now our paths diverge. It's completely different without Alexey. Today - only about the good; I’ll tell you about the reasons later,” Zhdanov wrote.

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“This decision was made without me.” Details of Zhdanov's dismissal

In an interview with Meduza, Zhdanov said that he left the organization not of his own free will, but by the decision of Leonid Volkov and Maria Pevchikh.

“This decision was made without me. No specific reasons were given. They offered me to stay, but I thought it was impossible for me,” Zhdanov noted. He added that the reason was "political and stylistic differences" and criticism within the organization.

“I did not hesitate to criticize us [FBK] within the organization itself, to say what is happening to us as it is. And this may have played a key role in my leaving FBK,” Zhdanov said.

He denied the connection between the dismissal and the cancellation of a concert in memory of Navalny in Berlin and disagreements with Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya - such information had previously appeared in a number of media outlets.

Vladislav Romantsov is the new director of FBK

Vladislav Romantsov became the new director of FBK on September 1. He headed the organization's IT department.

Romantsov joined Navalny’s team in 2013 as a volunteer and worked his way up from the sociology department to IT director, a position he took on in 2020. In this position, Romantsov was faced with the de-anonymization of FBK donors through the Stripe payment service, which could have led to the initiation of more than 70 criminal cases for transferring donations to the fund. Romantsov then said that the failure occurred on the Stripe side.

In addition to the change in leadership, the organization also experienced changes in media resources.Ruslan Shaveddinov became the head of all media resources of the fund, and Anastasia Kadetova became the manager of special projects. FBK noted that the updates in the leadership open a new stage in the history of the organization and contribute to development.

Earlier, “Verstka” wrote that Leonid Volkov was sentenced in absentia to 18 years in prison in Russia. In the case of Alexei Navalny’s ally, there are 45 episodes under 9 different criminal articles, including justification of terrorism

Photo: Ivan Zhdanov. Official telegram channel

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