A regional division of the Federal Security Service said Monday that it had opened a criminal case in connection with a complaint by Yekaterinburg mayoral hopeful Yevgeny Roizman, who alleges that his phone calls were being tapped.
Roizman, a close associate of billionaire politician Mikhail Prokhorov and the head of Yekaterinburg's City Without Drugs foundation, said Sunday that he had filed a complaint to the Sverdlovsk region FSB based on the discovery of transcripts of his telephone conversations by an unidentified former employee of the regional prosecutor's office.
“Here [in the Sverdlovsk region], I believe, there has never been such a precedent,” Roizman said, according to Itar-Tass.
On Monday, regional FSB spokeswoman Anna Lastovetskaya said the complaint had prompted the FSB to open a criminal case on a charge of disclosure of state secrets, the news agency reported. She did not elaborate on the details of the case.
Roizman announced last week that he would be running for mayor of Yekaterinburg in the Sept. 8 vote as the candidate from Prokhorov's Civil Platform party.
The former State Duma deputy is a polarizing political figure in the city, receiving both praise for the work of his City Without Drugs treatment centers and criticism of their methods, which some people call excessively harsh.
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