Russian activist Alexei Navalny convicted

A court in Russia's northern Kirov region has found protest leader Alexei Navalny guilty of stealing $500,000 from a timber company.

Judge Sergei Blinov said on Thursday that he found the 37-year-old critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin guilty of colluding to steal money in a timber deal while acting as an unpaid advisor to the local government.

Navalny, who emerged as a prominent opposition leader last year during anti-Putin protests, could be sentenced to up to six years in jail for what he has said were trumped-up charges.

That would bar him from running for Moscow mayor in September against Sergei Sobyanin, a Putin favourite, and from contesting the presidential election in 2018, in which Putin, Russia's dominant leader for 13 years, could try to extend his rule until 2024.

Sentencing was expected to be announced later on Thursday.

Navalny was accused over his role as an adviser in 2009 to a timber company that went bankrupt in Kirov, where he was an aide to the liberal regional governor. He denied the charges.

He had arrived by train along with his wife and a few supporters and left the train station for the courthouse without making any comment.

Navalny kept a low profile in the days before the trial verdict, which came days after a Russian court has handed down a posthumous guilty verdict for whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.

The lawyer died in pre-trial detention after accusing interior ministry officials of corruption.

The court also found Magnitsky's one-time client, the US-born British investor William Browder, guilty of evading about $17m in taxes this month.

The tax evasion case against Magnitsky was slammed by legal experts and Western governments including the US, which passed the "Sergei Magnitsky Act" this year. The Act imposed a visa ban and froze the assets of 18 officials implicated in the lawyer's death.

The legislation infuriated Moscow, which in retaliation passed legislation prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children.