Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov announced on Friday that he was quitting his Civil Platform political party after he recently harshly criticized some members' involvement in last month's anti-Maidan rally, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
"We will find other outlets for our projects," Prokhorov was quoted as saying at a party meeting, adding that the party, which he established, should either change its name or cease its activities to "not tarnish the names of decent people."
Prokhorov earlier said on his LiveJournal blog that party members should not have participated in the anti-Maidan rally in Moscow late last month because it had "little to do with the initial ideology of the Civil Platform party."
The downtown rally, which protested the ouster of Ukraine's former pro-Russian president a year ago and even featured an America-bashing outdoor photo exhibition, was notably attended by the Civil Platform party's head Rifat Shaikhutdinov.
The party voted to remove Shaikhutdinov after the event, but he still retained his position as a chairman of the party's federal committee, RIA Novosti reported.
Prokhorov founded Civil Platform in June 2012 as an opposition party, and he ran as for president that year, coming in third with 8 percent of the votes. His sister Irina Prokhorova chaired the party from December 2013 to July 2014.
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