Corruption fighter and opposition blogger Alexei Navalny has reached an agreement with a bank to release a debit card that will raise funds for a non-profit organization to corruption, Navalny spokeswoman Anna Veduta said.
One percent of money spent using the card will be transferred to an organization Navalny founded, the Fund for Fighting Corruption, Veduta told Vedomosti.
The money will not come from the accounts of card holders, but from the partner bank. The terms and conditions for the card will be standard for cards of the same type, though Veduta said the design would show that the cardholder is a "person who is not scared and someone who isn't indifferent." She said the bank is acting only out of business interest and does not explicitly support Navalny's activities.
Veduta did not name the bank that would release the card, though representatives of several banks, including Alfa Bank, Svyaznoi, Tinkoff Sistemy, Vyatka, and GE Money Bank have denied participation in the project.
According to data collected by market analysis agency Radar in April, the potential number of people seeking such cards could be as high as 4 million, the Vedomosti report said, without elaborating on the nature of Radar's analysis.
Navalny's anti-corruption project RosPil, created to track government tenders, has solicited donations through Yandex's online payment service and gathered over 8 million rubles from more than 20,000 people.
Navalny is currently serving a 15-day jail sentence for disobeying police orders at a May 6 rally. Socialite Kseniya Sobchak said Saturday that authorities were planning to imprison the opposition leader for two years, citing Kremlin sources, and Navalny's lawyer said he was being questioned in connection with charges of inciting a riot and harming a police officer.
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