The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office says it will look into recent remarks by the deputy chief of Transparency International Russia (TIR) regarding controversial lawmaker Natalya Poklonskaya.
Prosecutorial officials said on May 25 that they have received a request from a senior pro-Kremlin legislator, Vasily Piskaryov, to examine Ilya Shumanov's remarks to determine whether they were threatening.
The dispute began when Poklonskaya, a deputy in the lower house of parliament, suggested that TIR and opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s anticorruption foundation were themselves doing wrong.
Shumanov responded by writing on Facebook that Transparency would "have to launch an investigation against" Poklonskaya.
Piskaryov claimed that Shumanov’s post could be interpreted as an attempt to exert "undue influence" on Poklonskaya, who heads a parliamentary commission that oversees lawmakers’ income and asset declarations.
Poklonskaya was the Kremlin-appointed prosecutor-general in Crimea from the time Russia seized control of the Ukrainian territory in March 2014 until September 2016.
Navalny organized antigovernment rallies on March 26 that were Russia's largest and most widespread in years.
