Police in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk have confiscated the computers from opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's local election headquarters, saying Navalny's national campaign chief, Leonid Volkov, was suspected of copyright infringement and creating a computer virus.
Volkov on July 12 posted on Twitter a notice from the police saying that he was a suspect and authorizing the search of Navalny's Krasnoyarsk headquarters and all of its computers.
Volkov denied the charges and said the purpose of the raid was to disrupt the campaign.
The search came a day after police detained and questioned Navalny's Krasnoyarsk coordinator, Ruslan Rudenko, and confiscated printed campaign materials.
Anticorruption blogger Navalny is actively campaigning for the March 2018 presidential election, in which President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to seek and win a fourth term. Russian election officials, however, have said Navalny will not be allowed to contest the election because of his conviction on felony fraud charges that he says were politically motivated.
Dozens of his campaign workers have been detained in Moscow and other cities over the last week.
Navalny has spearheaded nationwide anticorruption protests in Russia this year that have jolted the country's political establishment.
