Moscow activist Konstantin Kotov has been requested to be sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison.

The prosecution has requested a seven-year sentence for Moscow activist Konstantin Kotov in the case concerning donations to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). Kotov’s lawyer reported this to OVD-Info.

In January, it became known that Kotov had left Russia.

In August 2024, authorities searched the activist’s home, and he was later placed under house arrest. He stands accused of financing an “extremist organisation” (Part 1, Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code). The prosecution is based on six transfers of 500 roubles (around US$5.50) each to FBK, made between August 2021 and 2022.

• In 2019, Konstantin Kotov was sentenced to four years in a penal colony under the law concerning repeated violations of public assembly regulations (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code)—a provision sometimes known as the “Dadinin-Kotov clause” after the most prominent people convicted under it. In April 2020, the Moscow City Court reduced the sentence to one and a half years. On 16 December 2020, the activist was released from Correctional Colony No. 2 in Vladimir, a city east of Moscow.