Source: openinform.ru 9 September 2011 ![]() The blogger Aleksei Navalny in court at the hearing of the defamation suit ![]() Today Vladlen Stepanov came to the court with a new lawyer. He had dismissed his previous lawyer because, the businessman said, he had not lived up to his expectations, the Open Information Agency correspondent reports. The position taken by the claimant has also changed. Now he is asking that a refutation be published of his alleged involvement in the theft of 5,5 billion roubles, and demands a refutation of six statements made in a video published on Aleksei Navalny’s blog. These phrases concern the family of Stepanov, the transfer of sums of money, the purchase of property and Stepanov’s spouse, from whom, the businessman stated today, he divorced at the beginning of the 1990s. ![]() ![]() Background: Vladlen Stepanov brought a defamation suit against the blogger Aleksei Navalny demanding that the latter pay him 1 million roubles in moral damages. Initially Stepanov stated that Navalny had disseminated information to the effect that he, Stepanov, had been involved in the theft of more than 5 billion roubles of budgetary funds, as discovered by the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who subsequently died in pre-trial detention. At the first hearing of the case on 29 August Stepanov’s lawyer had requested that the court increase the sum of damages by 100 roubles to 1,000,100 roubles. When the defendant did not ask the court to postpone the hearing as a result of the increase in the sum claimed, the claimant’s lawyer himself asked the court to postpone the hearing on the grounds that Vladlen Stepanov was unwell. |