A court in the city of Yekaterinburg ordered the closure of a charity foundation created by prominent Kremlin critic and former mayor Yevgeny Roizman over alleged misuse of funds, the exiled news outlet Mediazona reported Monday.
The Oktyabrsky District Court sided with the Justice Ministry’s Sverdlovsk region branch in ruling the Roizman Foundation guilty of mismanaging funds.
Established in 2015, the Roizman Foundation supports nonprofit initiatives and helps people in difficult life situations in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region.
The organization launched a crowdfunding campaign in 2021 to help cover the costs of expensive gene therapy for two local boys with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic condition that causes worsening muscle weakness.
During that campaign, the Russian government authorized a state-run charity founded by President Vladimir Putin to pay for the boys’ gene therapy, rendering the Roizman Foundation’s campaign “obsolete.”
A Justice Ministry investigation in the fall of 2024 found that the Roizman Foundation spent 88 million rubles ($1 million) from the collected 222 million rubles ($2.7 million) on a boarding home for young cancer patients on behalf of one of the boys’ mothers.
Law enforcement authorities then accused the Roizman Foundation of failing to immediately announce the return of the 131 million rubles ($1.6 million) remaining in its account to donors. However, the organization made such an announcement during the Justice Ministry inspection.
Roizman Foundation director Svetlana Kosolapova vowed to appeal Monday’s court ruling.
Roizman, 62, is one of the few openly anti-war political figures remaining in Russia. The former Yekaterinburg mayor has faced increasing pressure from the authorities since Moscow launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia’s Justice Ministry designated Roizman a “foreign agent” in November 2022.
In May 2023, he was fined for “discrediting” the Russian military after posting a YouTube video in July 2022 criticizing the war.
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