Nothing has followed from these charges so far. Mr. Navalny, though, became so unnerved that he gave his wife a list of phone numbers to call if he disappeared — other lawyers, journalists and opposition politicians.

“They could arrest me at any moment,” Mr. Navalny explained.

Indeed, after the Transneft documents were published, the government opened a criminal investigation against Mr. Navalny. It nominally has nothing to do with his Transneft disclosures. Instead, it involves his supposedly giving bad investment advice to a regional government several years ago, when he worked as an adviser to a local governor. That investigation, too, is still pending.

After the pipeline audit leak, men who identified themselves as security agents contacted clients of Mr. Navalny’s law practice, warning them against doing business with him, Mr. Navalny said.

Mr. Navalny has held down his day job as a real estate lawyer alongside his prolific online writing. He got his start in 2007 by suing Russian companies to force disclosure of accounting documents, using his standing as a minority stockholder owning a few shares. He would then publish the disclosures on a LiveJournal blog, eventually building up a following. He started Navalny.ru last year.

He has fans among Moscow financial analysts and bankers, in particular.

“I’ve been very successful, and I’m grateful,” said one Moscow banker, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Vladimir, given the controversy around Mr. Navalny. “Now I’d like to make this country a better place.” The banker said he discreetly volunteered to help Mr. Navalny analyze financial documents.

The Transneft controversy has only heightened interest in Mr. Navalny’s blog. He has since branched out from shareholder activism, creating RosPil.info, a new Web site about corruption in the government procurement process. It posts documents about state tenders and asks for public input on matters like the fairness of the prices or the deadlines.

It is a pioneering experiment in crowd-sourcing what had traditionally been investigative journalism, in a country where that type of journalism is repressed. The site is financed with online donations, using a Russian analogue to PayPal.