A senior figure in Russian President Vladimir Putin's
party has resigned after anti-corruption campaigners accused him of owning
homes in the US.
Vladimir Pekhtin has resigned his seat in parliament,
where he was head of the ethics committee.
The resignation was a major scalp for opposition
activist Alexei Navalny, who posted ownership documents online.
Mr Pekhtin described the affair as a
"misunderstanding" and said: "I will prove that I am
right."
He initially denied owning two apartments and a villa
in Florida, saying they belonged to his son.
But Mr Navalny posted deeds with Mr Pekhtin's
signature, identifying him as the part owner.
He had not entered the property in his annual
declaration of MPs' interests, as required by law.
The opposition has accused pro-Kremlin MPs of
hypocrisy for adopting anti-Western positions while secretly owning property in
the West.
Doctor Z
Mr Navalny has become one of the best known opposition
leaders, for his blogs alleging corruption among the elite, and for denouncing
Mr Putin's United Russia as "the party of crooks and thieves".
He has been arrested several times
and charged with fraud.
The documents on the US property
were actually provided to Mr Navalny by another blogger, known as Doctor Z.
He has been revealed to be Andrey
Zayakin, a Russian physicist working at the University of Santiago de
Compostela in Spain.
Both Mr Navalny and Mr Zayakin have
been keen to encourage others to follow their example and dig out documents
which expose corruption as a political tactic, says Stephen Ennis, a media
analyst with BBC Monitoring.
Doctor Z said on Wednesday that he
and Mr Navalny planned to expose more officials soon.
"This information gets
accumulated faster than we are able to analyse and publish it," he told
Kommersant FM radio.
Sources :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21525364
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