A leader of recent opposition protests in Russia said on Friday law enforcers pressured his wife by trying to bring her in for questioning as she stepped out of her plane in Moscow.
“It was an outrageous show of power,” Gennady Gudkov told RIA Novosti.
A group of Federal Security Service operatives approached Maria Gudkova after she arrived at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport on Friday, said Gudkov, himself a former colonel of the FSB’s predecessor, the KGB.
Gudkov said his wife interrupted her vacation with her grandchildren in Bulgaria for a one-day family celebration in Moscow.
Maria Gudkova was asked to travel to the Investigative Committee to be questioned over criminal allegations against her husband, but refused, said Gudkov, who is a State Duma deputy with the A Just Russia party.
A Bulgarian accused Gudkov of illegally running a business in the country and evading taxes in Russia, the Investigative Committee said last month. Gudkov called the case politically motivated.
The lawmaker promised he would complain to the Prosecutor General’s Office over Friday's incident, saying that the FSB apparently monitored his phone calls and spied on his family.
“They’re showing they’re controlling everyone,” he said. “They’re saying, Gudkov, you keep your mouth shut or else.”
Gudkov’s son, Dmitry, also a federal lawmaker, said on his blog earlier that the FSB tried to arrest his mother at the airport. However, an Investigative Committee spokesman denied it.
Gudkov, Sr. was one of the organizers of prolonged anti-Kremlin protests that swept Moscow after the parliamentary elections in December, which many called rigged.
His family business, a group of private security companies, came under pressure from authorities and was sold in June.
