Moscow:
Kremlin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has sued Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and a close ally for defamation, a Moscow court mentioned Tuesday.
The lawsuit appeared Tuesday on the site of a Moscow court, which later told the Russian news agency TASS that the claim sought 5 million rubles ($66,000) every from Navalny and his ally Vladimir Milov for defamatory statements.
Prigozhin, 59, is nicknamed “Putin’s chef” mainly because his enterprise Concord has catered for the Kremlin.
Last week Concord posted a copy of a lawsuit on the social media network Vkontakte that it mentioned it had submitted to the Moscow court.
The lawsuit cited an October 27 video stream by former deputy power minister Milov on Navalny’s YouTube channel Navalny Live.
In the video Milov accuses Prigozhin of “involving minors in prostitution” in his previous and describes him as a “bandit who serves Putin for all sorts of bad deeds”, which the lawsuit mentioned brought on the businessman to endure “moral injury”.
Navalny, 44, did not seem in the video stream.
In August the Kremlin critic fell violently ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow and was hospitalised in the Russian city of Omsk ahead of getting transferred by health-related aircraft to Berlin.
Experts from numerous Western nations determined that he was poisoned by the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok — a claim Moscow has repeatedly denied.
While Navalny was in a coma, Concord’s press service quoted Prigozhin as saying he intended to enforce a court selection final year that Navalny and his associates should spend him almost 88 million rubles in damages more than a video report.
“I intend to strip this group of unscrupulous people of their clothes and shoes,” Prigozhin was quoted as saying.
Days immediately after Navalny was released from a Berlin hospital in September his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh mentioned officials had seized the Kremlin critic’s apartment as aspect of the damages.
In October Prigozhin was sanctioned by the European Union on charges of undermining peace in Libya by supporting the Wagner Group private military enterprise.
He has also been sanctioned by the United States for allegedly meddling in its 2016 presidential vote and for his hyperlinks to Wagner, which has been accused of sending mercenaries to conflicts all through Africa and the Middle East.
Navalny has mentioned he will return to Russia after he has created a complete recovery in Germany.
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