Russia’s Top Dissident & Whistleblower – Navalny, likened to Snowden – Gets 5 Years. Russian Stocks Tank
The benchmark Micex Index (INDEXCF) reversed gains, trading down 1 percent at 1,416.89 by 12:57 p.m. in Moscow and snapping a five-day winning streak. The volume of shares traded on the Micex today was 120 percent above the 30-day average, data compiled by Bloomberg show, while 10-day price swings rose to 20.345, the most since June 27.
A judge in Kirov, 900 kilometers (560 miles) northeast of Moscow, handed down the sentence after ruling that Navalny defrauded Kirovles, a state-owned timber company, of 16 million rubles ($494,000).
Russia is ranked the most corrupt nation among the Group of 20 advanced economies in Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Navalny’s sentencing “shows once again that the Russian government is centralized and it fights the opposition,” Aleksei Belkin, who helps manage about $4.4 billion in assets as chief investment officer at Kapital Asset Management LLC in Moscow. “It reminds us about Russia’s political risks, which make the market so volatile.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-18/russia-stocks-plunge-as-putin-critic-gets-five-years.html
A few hours ago, in a somewhat ironic development, Russia’s most prominent opposition campaigner – whom some have likened to the US’ own Edward Snowden in terms of his whistleblowing aspirations – was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in prison, some 19 months after leading the biggest protests to challenge the Kremlin’s rule since the Soviet Union’s collapse.
This immediately hit none other than the local “wealth effect” with RIA reporting that “Russia’s stock market
fell sharply on Thursday according to Moscow Exchange data, after
investors took in the news that opposition blogger Alexei Navalny had
been found guilty in a controversial fraud trial and sentenced to five
years in jail.”
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