On Feb. 28, 2019, in the wake of Probusinessbank’s Yaroslav Alekseyev being arrested in Poland, Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, spoke with RBC.

“In 2012, ACF was negotiating with the bank’s managers on the launch of a card where the cash-back proceeds would have been credited to ACF. The bank then snubbed the project. Neither Leontiev nor his companies have ever bankrolled the foundation or our investigations.”

According to Yarmysh, the card deal was not being discussed with the bank’s top executives, and the talks drew a blank. And any past cooperation with ACF was flatly denied.

That card project story is totally unsubstantiated. The bank’s marketing team briefly entertained the idea, but discarded it altogether. The executives disapproved of the project, and it was scrapped. They did not sign a single document or make a single announcement. Everybody literally said that was a trifle story.

And there was no vendetta, either. The government had no reason to be vindictive toward the two bankers, as both Leontiev and Zheleznyak were embedded into the ruling class and treated accordingly: expert committee roles, government honors, etc.

Years later, the bankers and their aides whipped up the card project frenzy out of thin air.