Rumors that foreign intelligence financed Russian protests unsubstantiated

13:05 15/01/2013

MOSCOW, January 15 - RAPSI. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has not found any evidence that foreign intelligence services financed the protest rallies in Russia last year, Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

An investigation was launched following the airing of "The Anatomy of Protest" documentary.

The film was aired last March on NTV, a channel owned by state-run gas giant Gazprom, and claimed that foreign intelligence services financed the thousands-strong For Fair Elections protest rallies.

The film showed the White Ring opposition event on February 26, when thousands of people wearing white ribbons and holding white balloons, held hands around Moscow's Garden Ring, a boulevard that circles the city center.

© RIA Novosti Whistleblowing lawyer Alexei Navalny and liberal politician Ilya Yashin

Led by Navalny, over a hundred people filed requests demanding that law enforcement agencies look into NTV's information and, if it proves to be true, that a lawsuit be opened under the article on treason.

The FSB's Investigative Department examined the issue for over 10 months, with the assistance of other law enforcement agencies.

According to the FSB, filmmaker Alexei Malkov said that he relied on public information when making the documentary.

Navalny's lawyer Vadim Kobzev does not rule out suing NTV for slander.

The second part of the film, which was broadcast on NTV in October, was used as grounds for bringing opposition figures Sergei Udaltsov, Leonid Razvozzhayev and Leonid Lebedev to court for instigating mass unrest.

The filmmakers allege that the opposition was paid by foreign patrons to plot a coup d'etat. The film shows Udaltsov and his supporters talking with Georgian parliamentary Defense and Security Committee head Givi Targamadze, who allegedly helped organize "color revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine and mass riots in Belarus.