Boris Nadezhdin received a penalty with a discount.

As a reminder, the Central Election Commission (CEC) has accused Boris Nadezhdin of failing to fully disclose information regarding the receipts to his election fund, illegal use of funds, and violation of transfer regulations (Articles 5.17, 5.18, and 5.50 of the Administrative Code). According to the CEC, the candidate's financial report lacks a complete bank statement for the special account, and some payment documents and contracts with signature collectors are either incomplete or improperly executed. Furthermore, the total amount of funds that Boris Nadezhdin failed to return and were prohibited from acceptance exceeded 9.8 million rubles, which has been classified under two articles of the Administrative Code: illegal use of funds and violation of transfer regulations.

“Do you acknowledge your guilt?” the judge asked the former candidate as she began reviewing the first protocol.

“There were certainly some mistakes,” Mr. Nadezhdin cautiously explained, “but they were related to the enormous volume of donations that no one was prepared for. There has never been such a number of contributions — 45,000 people made them!”

The problem, according to him, was that when a person makes a donation to the election fund, they are required to provide a lot of different information about themselves, and if they miss something or make a mistake, it is considered an anonymous donation, which must be returned. However, the candidate does not see this and has to wait for a notification from the CEC. Initially, there were dozens of such returns each day, the politician recounted, and his team managed them, but then the flow began to increase dramatically — and the headquarters "was overwhelmed"; even appointing additional financial representatives did not help.

Moreover, Boris Nadezhdin believes that the CEC exacerbated the problem by blocking his account immediately after the registration denial. This prevented the former candidate from settling with signature collectors and for other services, as well as returning anonymous donations. It was problematic to obtain service receipts without paying for them, the politician reasonably noted, and complained: “I have participated in elections for 35 years, and it has never happened that I wasn't allowed to settle accounts.” For example, the account he opened for the gubernatorial elections in the Moscow region in 2023 had to be closed during the 2024 presidential campaign to avoid confusing donors. “Furthermore, I was not involved in handling the money at all; my financial representatives took care of that. I am not an accountant; I deal with politics,” Boris Nadezhdin explained.

“The candidate is responsible for submitting the report,” snapped Olga Aleshina, head of the financial control department for political parties and election funds at the CEC, whom the court called as a witness.

She stated that candidates' accounts are always blocked immediately after they cease their participation in the campaign. Moreover, there is no question of the inability to track anonymous donations, the CEC employee insisted: letters were sent to the candidate for all checks, but they were ignored. Even payments “with clear signs of anonymity” were not returned — and there were many offensive inscriptions directed at the sitting president, Ms. Aleshina lamented. In any case, the volume of contracts with counterparties exceeded the remaining funds in the account, where only 5,000 rubles remained before the blocking, the CEC representative added.

“If they had unblocked the account, I would have collected those millions in a week!” Boris Nadezhdin exclaimed. “So, do you acknowledge your guilt? The event of an administrative offense?” the judge inquired again. “The only thing I am willing to repent for is underestimating the scale of the campaign,” the former candidate firmly maintained. But then, after some thought, he agreed to acknowledge guilt if it would reduce the penalty. After all, for a pensioner with an income of 41,000 rubles, the punishment threatens to be “unbearable,” Boris Nadezhdin admitted.

In the end, the court took into account the partial acknowledgment of guilt and other mitigating circumstances, and the total amount of fines assigned was 50,000 rubles — a third lower than the maximum possible under these articles. At the same time, the judge found no grounds for recognizing the violation as minor (and, accordingly, for exemption from liability), noting the public danger of the applicant's negligent attitude towards fulfilling his duties as a presidential candidate.

Anastasia Korynia