Russia's maverick parliamentarian Dmitry Gudkov, dubbed the country's "only independent lawmaker" by some news outlets, has filed a request with the Russian Investigative Committee calling on it to look into the allegations against chief prosecutor Yury Chaika, his family, and his deputy Gennady Lopatin, accused by Russia's one-time opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation of a range of shady business dealings and links to organized crime, Russian media reported Tuesday.
On the same day, Gudkov posted on Facebook saying that he would like to know the answers to two questions related to a series of murders in the southern Russian town of Kushchevskaya, after the Foundation's investigative film linked Lopatin to the Tsapok gang found responsible for the killings.
Я долго ждал. Осилил все семь страниц ответа Чайки «Коммерсанту». Освежил благодаря этому в памяти дело Магнитского. Но ...
Posted by Dmitry Gudkov on 14 декабря 2015 г.
In his post, he referred to allegations by former Russian Interior Ministry investigator Pavel Karpov, as well as by Chaika himself, that the U.S. investor and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin William "Bill" Browder, as well as U.S. secret services, were attempting to mount a smear campaign against the prosecutor, of which the film was part.
"Was it the perfidious CIA creeping into the depths of electronic databases, writing in [the names of] spotlessly clean guardians of the law? Or did [Bill] Browder bribe clerks personally?," Gudkov wrote.
No public investigation into Chaika's businesses has been opened so far, with the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying Russian authorities were not interested in the dealings of Chaika's "grown-up" sons, whose affairs he said had nothing to do with the top prosecutor.
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