Former Anti-Corruption Foundation director denies ex-deputy prime minister’s allegations, defends Navalny’s return to Russia

Vladimir Ashurkov, a financier and ally of Alexei Navalny, gave a three-hour interview to journalist Yury Dud. In the 2000s, Ashurkov served as chief financial officer of the Port of St. Petersburg and as a top manager at Alfa Group. From 2010 onward he took part in Alexei Navalny’s investigations and later became executive director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), a position he held until 2023. In the interview with Dud, Ashurkov addressed questions about recent scandals surrounding FBK, including whether Navalny’s allies took money from oligarchs, why they worked with former Probusinessbank co-owner Alexander Zheleznyak, and who initiated the letter in support of billionaire Mikhail Fridman. Here are the most important quotes.

Did Ashurkov ask oligarchs for money?

In an earlier interview with Yury Dud, former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alfred Kokh claimed that:

In 2012, Vladimir Ashurkov, who was then executive director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, asked Kokh and his acquaintances — “oligarchs” — for $100 million. In exchange for their support, Ashurkov allegedly promised to hand Gazprom over to the sponsors once Navalny’s allies came to power. Whether Navalny knew about the offer is unknown — Kokh said he never asked the politician because he was sure “Ashurkov was just blowing smoke.”
In 2012, Kokh passed money for “the movement” ($50,000) to Navalny through journalist and human rights activist Olga Romanova. “And he accepted it gratefully. Had lunch with me afterward,” Kokh said.

That’s not true. This isn’t the first time Kokh has said this. I used to think maybe I had some kind of memory lapse, because I didn’t remember any of it. But I watched his interview with you, and it’s lie after lie. None of this happened. A man who lies that much is capable of making up anything.

Did Kokh sponsor FBK?

There was one moment, in early 2014. Navalny wrote or told me that $100,000 was supposed to come from Kokh, and that [human rights activist] Olga Romanova was supposed to deliver it. Olya and I met. She said that once the money came in, she would pass it along. But for some reason, it never happened. By April 2014, I had already left Moscow. I don’t know why people make such a big deal out of this. If that money had reached me, of course, I would have taken it and used it for FBK’s needs. The money never reached us. Kokh feels some kind of envy or resentment that his valuable advice, which he tried to share with us, was never taken into account.

Did Ashurkov try to talk Navalny out of returning to Russia?

It’s one of my great regrets that at that moment I couldn’t leave the United Kingdom — I was waiting for documents. I couldn’t go to him in Germany and see him in person, but we talked over Zoom. My friends and colleagues at the time — Lenya Volkov, Masha Pevchikh, and, of course, Yulia [Navalnaya] — were spending all their time with him. They were closer to that decision.

When he was coming out of the coma, I felt an obligation not so much to talk him out of it as to make him understand that he had options: to stay in Germany a bit longer, that returning to Russia right away wasn’t necessary. Our first call, after he came out of the coma and started to recover, we started talking, and I realized there was no point in even raising the subject. He had made his decision — he was going back to Russia. […] At that point, there was no other thought in his mind, no other option, except to return to Russia.

Was Zheleznyak a volunteer or FBK’s treasurer?

In October 2024, politician and blogger Maxim Katz published an investigation into Alexander Zheleznyak and Sergei Leontyev, former owners of Probusinessbank, whose license had been revoked. Katz accused them of stealing money from the bank’s clients. He also claimed that the businessmen tried to rehabilitate their reputations after fleeing Russia for the United States to escape criminal prosecution. According to the investigation’s author, the Anti-Corruption Foundation helped them do so. In 2021, Zheleznyak established a U.S. legal entity called the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Citing the organization’s filings, Katz called Zheleznyak “the primary decision-maker” at the foundation.

The Anti-Corruption Foundation responded that it had reviewed the alleged schemes for moving money out of Probusinessbank. The foundation said Zheleznyak and Leontyev had not stolen the $470 million that Katz accused them of taking. The Anti-Corruption Foundation also denied any role in shielding the bankers.

According to Navalny’s allies, after the Anti-Corruption Foundation was declared an “extremist” organization in Russia in 2021, they needed to set up an American legal entity, and Zheleznyak “volunteered to handle all the administrative work himself” and asked for “nothing in return” from the foundation. Zheleznyak, listed as treasurer of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s U.S. legal entity, “makes no decisions,” Navalny’s allies maintained.

After Katz’s investigation was published, Ashurkov said that Zheleznyak had been on the ACF board of directors until July 2022. Zheleznyak himself announced his departure from the international Anti-Corruption Foundation shortly after the investigation was published.

It was 2021 — FBK had been declared an extremist organization. We needed to restructure our entire financial infrastructure and register a new legal entity. The most convenient way to collect donations was through Stripe, which required a U.S. legal entity, so we decided to register a nonprofit in America. There was no one there who could handle it. We were looking for someone. […] And Lenya [Volkov] told me: “The new person handling this will be Alexander Zheleznyak.” I didn’t know him at the time, but it was clear he had a financial background, had lived in Boston for several years, and had coordinated Navalny support groups in several American cities. We brought him on to help us register the nonprofit, comply with all legal requirements, open a bank account, and manage it. We didn’t have the time or the means to vet him back then. […]

In 2023, various investigations surfaced about what had happened at Probiznesbank. That’s when we had a chance, I think, to discuss the matter and decide to replace someone who had become the subject of such reporting. Unfortunately, we didn’t act quickly. He served as treasurer for a time — not as a decision-maker or a board member, but as the technical person who ran the bank account. Eventually, we decided to let him go. Unfortunately, later than we could have and should have. That was a genuine mistake.

Who came up with the letter in support of Fridman?

When the full-scale invasion [of Russia into Ukraine] began, Fridman and other Alfa shareholders came under sanctions. I reached out to him and thought it would be interesting to meet. At that meeting, we discussed the situation. My conviction, while I worked on political strategy within Navalny’s team, was that a political force with aspirations to power in Russia should be in contact with the Russian business elite, with all the advantages and complications that come with it. It was clear that Fridman had not been very interested in such contact before the war. Once he came under sanctions, that might change. I decided to try to open that dialogue.

I met with Fridman. Lenya Volkov and I thought that, given the circumstances, it would be worth trying to pull the Russian business elite toward the West and against Putin. We thought it might be possible to help businessmen get out from under Western sanctions in exchange for some kind of action toward distancing themselves from Putin’s regime, condemning the war, and helping Ukraine. We began that dialogue with Fridman and had a couple of meetings in London. Fridman was lobbying for his own removal from the sanctions list. He asked several Russian public figures to write letters of support. And he approached Lenya about it. Whether to sign was Volkov’s decision. He had the option not to sign, but he chose to.

A separate issue was whether any of this needed to be discussed with colleagues at the FBK. […] I told him it was a risk and that he might want to run the letter by his colleagues first. His position was that he was the head of the political wing of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Navalny’s team, and that signing such a letter fell within his mandate and prerogative. He later acknowledged that it was a mistake.

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