RUSSIAN investigators have opened their third criminal case in five months against an opposition leader who poses one of the main challenges to President Vladimir Putin in opinion polls.
The Investigative Committee said it had charged anti-corruption blogger and lawyer Alexei Navalny with "swindling committed by an organised group or on an especially large scale".
The charge - which relates to allegations over a case dating back five years - carries a jail sentence of up to 10 years.
Navalny spearheaded the opposition movement that emerged last year in the wake of disputed parliamentary elections that the ruling party won despite suspicions of fraud.
The 36-year-old - often ranked as the most popular opposition campaigner and an emerging politician who has not ruled out running for president - denies all the charges and views the probes against him as political.
"Lord, they have opened another criminal case against me," Navalny tweeted moments after the news was announced. "The Investigative Committee - what are you doing... Enough."
He later told Russian media that investigators were simply trying to intimidate him "by showing that they could next arrest me for crossing the street in the wrong place".
Navalny is already the focus of an embezzlement probe linked to a murky business deal conducted by a small regional timber company in which he was involved. That offence also risks a 10-year sentence.
Investigators last week also launched a money laundering investigation against Navalny and his brother related to a little-known trading firm.
The latest case concerns 100 million roubles ($A3 million at current exchange rates) allegedly stolen from a liberal political party called the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) in 2007.
The charges say a company involving Navalny secured an SPS advertising contract that was never fulfilled.
SPS disbanded in 2008 after badly losing a series of elections and Navalny continued with other projects.
But the group's former members expressed amazement at charges that emerged five years after the alleged theft.
"If there was something dirty going on, I would have known about it," said top former party member Leonid Gozman.
An aide to current regional governor and former SPS leader Nikita Belykh also told Moscow Echo radio that no money had been stolen from the party.
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