Two weeks ago, representatives of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by Navalny, made an unexpected discovery. The hammer attack on Navalny's associate Leonid Volkov in Vilnius in March this year was allegedly organized not by Russian special services, as one might have first thought, but by a close associate of another Kremlin opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Leonid Nevzlin, a billionaire living in Israel.
Navalny's team obtained text correspondence. They discuss the attacks, defamation of others, and possible bribery of officials. Quite a lot of the correspondence concerns Latvia. LTV's "de facto" was able to obtain these extracts from Navalny's team.
De Facto reports that the attacker Blinov moved around Europe using a forged Latvian passport. A year ago in September, Blinov sent a photo, probably to Nevzlin, from the cabin of a plane that had successfully flown from Madrid to Warsaw. "The document passed all checks," Blinov wrote.
In the picture sent by Blynov, you can see that the fake Latvian passport was issued in 2017 in the name of a non-citizen, Sergejs Šturba. De Facto verified that the passport details are genuine, except for the picture showing Blinov instead of Šturba.
Sergejs Šturba is a real person living in Liepāja. A few companies have been registered in Šturba's name. He has been tried several times for theft.
He was caught stealing women's gloves 10 years ago, the local newspaper "Kurzemes vārds" reported. He also regularly stole coffee and chocolate.
LTV was able to meet Šturba at his home in the Karosta district of Liepāja to ask how his passport could have ended up in the possession of Blinov, now detained for allegedly organizing an attack on Navalny's associate Volkov.
Answering questions through an open first-floor window, Šturba gave his side of the story. He said it was simple: his passports had regularly been stolen. "In prison, I was still writing an application that my passport had been stolen. They steal abroad and I am, I tell you honestly, careless with my documents. Now I hide the documents separately," says Šturba.
Šturba got out of the Liepāja prison a few weeks ago. He was in prison for old shoplifting charges. When he got out, he got a new passport because he no longer had the old one. He denies that he sold the passport to anyone for profit.
De Facto found out that the document used by Blinov was reported as lost by Šturba only in August this year, shortly before his release from prison. This means that the passport has only recently been cancelled.
"According to the information you have provided, the State Police will take all necessary measures to investigate the alleged forgery of documents," says Dimitrijs Trofimovs, State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior. He said that the investigation will require cooperation with Poland, where Blinov is currently in detention.
