Alexander Belov (Potkin)

Detained on 15 October 2014 in connection with a criminal case initiated in 2009 against Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh banker and politician, and a group of individuals associated with him for alleged embezzlement of loan funds from BTA Bank JSC (Republic of Kazakhstan), formerly controlled by Ablyazov; accused of laundering money acquired by others through criminal means; placed under house arrest, but was soon transferred to a pre-trial detention centre due to the fact that the Russian authorities received a case of inciting social, national, tribal, racial or religious hatred from Kazakhstan, but Belov was never charged with the relevant article; in March-April 2015, he underwent an in-patient complex psychological and psychiatric examination at the Serbsky Institute; at that time, the defence was in the process of defending him. In September 2015, he was charged with establishing an extremist community to overthrow the regime of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

On 19 August 2015, it became known that another case was opened against Belov - on calls for extremist activity based on a fragment of the documentary film "Term"; it was later merged with the main case

On 24 August 2016, Belov was sentenced to seven and a half years in a general regime penal colony. On 14 April 2017, the court of appeal reduced the sentence to three and a half years.

The money laundering case was allocated to separate proceedings. On 4 March 2018, the money laundering charge was mitigated: the amount of damage was reduced from 4.9 billion rubles (67 million euros) to 300 million rubles (4 million euros) and the charge was reclassified from money laundering to attempted money laundering.

On 17 January 2018, the case on extremist articles was sent for a new review. On 28 March, the sentence of three and a half years was confirmed. The testimony of three witnesses and the aggravating circumstance - a particularly active role in the commission of the offences - were excluded from the sentence. The court also considered that the charge under paragraph "c" of part 2 of article 282 of the Criminal Code (organised group actions aimed at inciting hatred) was unnecessary.

On 13 April Belov was released after three and a half years of imprisonment. The day before, the court ordered to place him under house arrest on the economic article. In October 2018, the case was returned to the prosecutor's office.

In February 2024, it became known that Belov was put on a wanted list.