Acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has submitted his passport, declaration of candidacy as an independent and statement of income for last year to the Election Committee, Interfax reported Monday.
These, along with other necessary documents, were checked by the committee's president, Valentin Gorbunov, who then presented Sobyanin with a receipt and permission to open an electoral bank account.
Each registered candidate is by law obliged to open a special account in state-owned Sberbank, through which all campaign funding must be channeled. All activity on the account must cease on election day, Sept. 8.
Sobyanin now has until July 11 to collect the signatures of 73,021 Moscow voters and 110 local municipal deputies in order to qualify for the race.
Sobyanin is the ninth candidate faced with the task of gathering signatures. He joins, among others, Sergei Mitrokhin of the Yabloko party, Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist balloting for RP-Party of People's Freedom, and Mikhail Degtyarev from the LDPR.
Sobyanin will ballot independently from any political party. While he is a member of the party's supreme council, Sobyanin decided not to run under the aegis of the ruling United Russia party.
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