Anti-corruption blogger and opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been elected to the board of directors of Russia’s largest airline Aeroflot, at the airline’s annual shareholders’ meeting on Monday.
Navalny was nominated by the National Reserve Bank controlled by businessman Alexander Lebedev whose structures hold about 15 percent in the flagship airline. The controlling stake of 51.17 percent is held by the Russian government.
A total of 787 million votes were cast in favor of Navalny’s candidacy. Aeroflot’s issued share capital consists of 1.11 billion ordinary shares with a par value of one ruble.
Anti-corruption blogger Navalny has sought in the past few years to obtain documents via court rulings from a number of state-run companies, in a bid to make their activities transparent. As a minority shareholder in state-run oil major Rosneft, Navalny attempted to get the company’s minutes of board meetings for 2009, and also copies of agreements on crude oil supplies to China.
Navalny has also been a leading figure in the protest movement which emerged in Russia after last year's parliamentary elections. Last week, Rosneft President Igor Sechin accused Navalny of working for London-based Hermitage Capital, the company at the center of the Magnitsky scandal, a charge he denied.
