Press release, 13.02.2019

The Investigation Committee is conducting a search in the office of the Pskov regional branch of the Yabloko party, as Dmitry Permyakov, Deputy Chair of the Yabloko branch confirmed to the Press Service.

According to the staff of the regional branch who are in the office, an investigative team out of three investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, including an officer the Centre E [the Chief Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Counteraction to Extrimism], a technician and an investigator for particularly important cases, and in the presence of two witnesses, are looking for office equipment used for printing a leaflet calling voters to cross the boxes for all the candidates for the post of Governor of the Pskov region making the ballot null and void in the past gubernatorial elections in September 2018, and a video in support of this appeal.

The investigators are sorting out the files on the office computers containing the phrase “against all.”

The search is taking place in the framework of the criminal case about allegedly “obstructing the exercise of electoral rights”. The investigators believe that the leaflet calling to vote for all the candidates for Governor of the Pskov region led to a distortion of the will of voters and prevented it from being adequately reflected in the voting results, and also violated the rights of registered candidates for Governor of the Pskov region Vedernikov, Kulakov, Minakov, Murylev and Romanov to be elected.

“We see that this criminal case is directed personally against me and not against someone else,” Lev Shlosberg, head of the Pskov Yabloko and regional MP, told Novaya Gazeta paper.

Lawyer Elena Mayatnikova, member of the Election Commission of the Pskov Region from Yabloko, explained that a warrant from court was required in order to conduct a search in the office of the Pskov Yabloko, since this is the office space of Lev Shlosberg, MP of the Pskov Regional Assembly, who, according to the Criminal Procedure Code, is a special subject in conducting investigative actions, “but the investigator refuses to admit it.”

It should be also noted that during Moscow Mayoral election campaign in 2018, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin publicly addressed voters via YouTube and said that those who do not see worthy candidates to vote for should come to the polling stations and cross out all the candidates.