Russian opposition lawmaker faces probe 

MOSCOW – Russia’s Investigative Committee says it has launched a criminal inquiry against Ilya Ponomaryov, the lone State Duma representative to vote against the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Mr. Ponomaryov, a member of the A Just Russia party, is accused of embezzling money earmarked for the Skolkovo science and technology park project outside Moscow. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said on June 9 that since Mr. Ponomaryov was currently residing outside Russia, the committee planned to seek an international arrest warrant for him. In April, Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, voted to strip Mr. Ponomaryov’s immunity from prosecution. Lawmakers from A Just Russia announced on June 8 that they had begun the process of stripping Mr. Ponomaryov of his parliamentary mandate. Sergei Mironov, leader of the party’s parliamentary faction, told reporters in Moscow that the move had nothing to do with the charges faced by Mr. Ponomaryov, but with the fact that he had not attended parliamentary sessions since September. Authorities accuse Mr. Ponomaryov, one of a handful of opposition lawmakers in the State Duma, of embezzling some 22 million rubles (about $393,000) earmarked for the Skolkovo technology hub. Mr. Ponomaryov denies wrongdoing and says the embezzlement allegations are politically motivated. Mr. Ponomaryov was the only Duma member to vote in March 2014 against a treaty to annex Crimea from Ukraine, preventing a unanimous show of support in the 450-member body. He told RFE/RL that he voted “absolutely correctly and would vote in exactly the same way again.” (RFE/RL, with reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service and Interfax)