If anyone is interested in looking into the case "On Navalny’s alleged theft of timber" on their own, here are some lengthy pieces on the subject.
Four different journalists from four different outlets carefully studied all the documents and wrote the following:
Moskovsky Komsomolets:
The Deeper into the Woods, the Longer the Sentence
Sergey Bachinin, editor-in-chief of Kirov’s main newspaper, Vyatsky Nablyudatel:
“...there’ll always be a charge!” Or how the “Navalny case” was fabricated out of thin air
Fontanka:
Navalny Didn’t “Steal” the Entire Forest — He Left Some Behind
And the biggest and most detailed piece is from The New Times, whose journalist even spent a week in Kirov and interviewed a bear and a moose:
Dark ForestA New Case Against Alexei Navalny Full text Basically, since justice is clearly in short supply in Russian courts, the main line of my defense is very simple: I suggest that everyone look into the case for themselves. It’s not difficult, and my unfortunate “accomplice,” Ofitserov, is providing absolutely all of his accounting documents to any journalists who are interested. What else can we do? We have to tear away the veil from these shocking secrets of illicit enrichment. It’s actually a very instructive story. Everyone knows you can plant drugs or a couple of bullets on someone, but here we see a situation where, in*** the literal sense, they are planting “the theft of 16 million rubles” (about $500,000 at the time).*** They’re operating on a grand scale. The story seems simple enough: a company run by an acquaintance of mine bought goods from a state enterprise for 14.5 million rubles (about $450,000 at the time), then sold those goods for 16 million rubles (about $500,000). The difference went to taxes and officially declared salaries. Everything is in the books. No cash-outs. A real office. Real employees. Real services. No dividends. No payments for “consulting services” to somewhere in the Bahamas, or any other tricks. But then along comes chec(h) spy Bastrykin and declares: “Navalny stole 16 million rubles,” and this is immediately broadcast enthusiastically on the main national TV channels (and there’s no censorship either: see, we even show Navalny on television). WHAAAT?! This whole pile of nonsense is exposed in the simplest possible way, in one move: there are just bank transfer records showing exactly how much money went where. But the Investigative Committee doesn’t care about such trifles: with them it’s like in the old joke, it doesn’t matter whether he stole it or it was stolen from him — what matters is that the impression remains. And yes, let me officially note one small but telling detail: the FSB is handling the operational side of the “Kirov case.” Ofitserov’s home was searched last week by FSB operatives. On Friday, documents were seized from Sberbank in Kirov (where Kirovles has its settlement account), again by an investigator from Moscow accompanied by the FSB. There are now four major-case investigators on the investigative team. So I’m no small fry now — I’m the creator of a criminal organization threatening the security of the Russian Federation. And what have you achieved?