Creation FBK was founded by Alexei Navalny. The Foundation was registered on 9 September 2011 (account No. 7714013315, OGRN 1117799018204). According to Vladimir Ashurkov, the founders of the fund gained experience in public and transparent fundraising by organising financing for the RosPil project. A significant amount was collected through the
Yandex.Money payment system, which provided financial support for the project for a year. In parallel, the founders of the fund are working on the idea of involving on a permanent basis professional
lawyers and
economists in the search for and suppression of corruption schemes in the
public procurement system. The contractual basis will allow to get some guarantees, in contrast to the scheme for working with volunteers. Later the amount was reduced to ₽75 million (c. US$1.15 mln). On 5 September 2019, searches were conducted at the FBK office and at the "Navalny LIVE" studio. Soon after the
2019 Moscow City Duma election, on 12 September 2019 the SKR carried out mass raids on the FBK regional offices in 40 Russian cities. In September 2019, various
state-owned companies filed lawsuits against FBK for "organising
riots", and the courts partially satisfied them in the amount of ₽5 million (c. US$78 000). On 8 October 2019, the police filed a lawsuit against FBK for "costs of maintaining order during rallies" in the amount of ₽18 million (c. US$280,000). On 9 October 2019, the FBK was declared a "
foreign agent" by the
Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation due to payments from the
United States and
Spain. One of these payments was the payment of
US$50 made by Yuriy Maslikhov, a
Russian citizen residing in the United States. In an interview with journalists, Yuriy Maslikhov stated that he had transferred the money from his
PayPal account as an individual and he had been carrying out such donations earlier. Two other payments totalling
₽138,505.41 (c.
US$2170) were carried out by
Spanish citizen Roberto Fabio Monda Cardenas through
CaixaBank on 6 and 17 September 2019. Answering a question of journalists how he, unable to speak
Russian, found out the wire payment instructions of the Anti-Corruption Foundation after its removing from official website of the organisation, Roberto Fabio Monda Cardenas was unable to explain. These payments were carried out at a time when the bank account of the Anti-Corruption Foundation was frozen at the request of the
Investigative Committee of Russia. Despite the fact that the Anti-Corruption Foundation gave the money back,
Ministry of Justice of Russia refused to remove the Anti-Corruption Foundation from the register of "foreign agents". On 15 October 2019, the SKR again carried out mass raids on the FBK regional offices in 30 Russian cities.
Change of legal entity and dissolution In February 2019, FBK published an investigation that reported that in December 2018, mass food poisoning of children occurred in kindergartens and schools in Moscow. FBK blamed Concord Food Plant LLC, Moskovskiy Shkolnik LLC and VITO-1 LLC for this, which he linked with
Yevgeny Prigozhin. Subsequently, Moscow schools No. 760 and No. 1554 assessed fines against Moskovskiy Shkolnik due to the supply of low-quality food. In April 2019, Moskovskiy Shkolnik filed a lawsuit against FBK, Navalny, FBK lawyer
Lyubov Sobol, who was in charge of the investigation, and its former employee Natalya Shilova, who was involved in the investigation. In October 2019, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Navalny to pay 29.2 million rubles as compensation for lost profits and damage to professional reputation. The court ordered Lyubov Sobol and FBK to pay the same amount. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision. In July 2020, Navalny said that he saw no reason to raise money to pay the "huge amount". He announced that the FBK would be liquidated, and that he and Sobol "until the end of Putin's power" would have to live with blocked accounts and bailiffs seizing any of their property in favour of "Putin's chef". Navalny said that he intended to revive the FBK shortly after as another legal entity.
Designation as an "extremist" organisation On 16 April 2021, the Moscow prosecutor office requested the
Moscow City Court to declare organisations linked to Navalny including the FBK and his headquarters as "extremist", claiming: "Under the disguise of liberal slogans, these organisations are engaged in creating conditions for the destabilisation of the social and socio-political situation." In response, Navalny aide
Leonid Volkov stated: "Putin has just announced full-scale mass political repression in Russia." On 26 April 2021, the Moscow prosecutor office ordered Navalny's network of regional offices to stop its activities, pending a ruling by the court on whether to designate them and the FBK as "extremist" organisations. The move was condemned by
Germany and
Amnesty International. On 9 June 2021, Vyacheslav Polyga,
judge of
Moscow City Court, upheld the administrative claim of the
prosecutor of
Moscow city Denis Popov and, rejecting all the petitions of the defense, decided to declare the Anti-Corruption Foundation as an "extremist" organisation, to liquidate it and to
confiscate its assets; a similar decision had been taken against the Citizens' Rights Protection Foundation; the activity of the
Alexei Navalny staff was prohibited (case No.3а-1573/2021). The case hearing was held
in camera because, as indicated by
advocate Ilia Novikov, the case file including the text of the administrative claim was
classified as a
state secret. According to
advocate Ivan Pavlov, Alexei Navalny was not a party to the proceedings and the
judge refused to give him such status; at the hearing, the
prosecutor stated that the defendants constitute "extremist" organisations because they want a change of power in
Russia and they promised to help participants of the protest with payment of administrative and criminal fines and with making complaints to the
European Court of Human Rights. On 28 December 2021, it was reported that Anti-Corruption Foundation, Citizens' Rights Protection Foundation and 18 natural persons including Alexei Navalny filed a cassation appeals to the Second Cassation Ordinary Court. On 25 March 2022, the
Second Cassation Ordinary Court rejected all cassation appeals and upheld the judgements of lower courts (case No.8а-5101/2022). Several members of the organisation, including
Lilia Chanysheva (the head of the
Ufa branch of the organisation) and
Daniel Kholodny (the technical director of the foundation's
YouTube channel), were arrested and sentenced to long prison sentences.
Memorial considers them
political prisoners.
Relaunch as international organisation In January 2021, former Russian banker
Alexander Zheleznyak registered the international non-profit Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) in the United States. On 11 July 2022, Navalny announced the relaunch of the FBK as an international organisation with an advisory board including his wife
Yulia Navalnaya,
Guy Verhofstadt,
Anne Applebaum, and
Francis Fukuyama; Navalny also stated that the first contribution to Anti-Corruption Foundation International would be the
Sakharov Prize ($50,000) that was awarded to him. On 4 October, allies of Navalny said they were relaunching his regional network to fight the
mobilisation and
war, saying it would be a "partisan underground" movement. On 1 June 2023, the
Ministry of Justice added the Anti-Corruption Foundation International to the list of "
undesirable organisations"; earlier in December 2022, the ACF International was declared a "foreign agent". After
the death of Navalny in a Russian prison in February 2024, his wife
Yulia Navalnaya leads the organisation. On 15 April 2025, Russia sentenced four journalists (Antonina Favorskaya, Konstantin Gabov, Sergei Karelin, and Artem Kriger) to five and a half years in a penal colony. Prosecutors accused the four of producing material for the Anti-Corruption Foundation's YouTube channel. On 22 October 2025, the
Prosecutor General's Office petitioned the
Supreme Court of Russia to designate the ACF as a "terrorist organisation". On 27 November 2025, the court designated the ACF as a "
terrorist organisation". ==Notable investigations==