In Moscow, security forces came to the Zakharov publishing house, which also publishes books by Boris Akunin (Grigory Chkhartishvili). This was reported on the publisher's Facebook page.
“To the publishing house "Zakharov" came from the Investigative Committee with a search. Nothing is clear yet,” the post says.
There was only one employee in the publishing house’s office at the time, publishing house director Irina Bogat told Mediazona. The employee asked to photograph the search warrant, but she was not allowed to do so and her phone was taken away.
From the office, the investigators are going to go to the publishing house’s warehouse and promised to “break down the doors there,” the head of the publishing house said. She confirmed that, according to the security forces, their visit is connected with the case against Boris Akunin.
“Obviously, this is due to the fact that we are the only ones who did not withdraw Akunin’s books from sale, from our website, and did not, like AST, make a statement that we were ceasing cooperation with Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili. These are, obviously, the consequences of our behavior,” says Bogat.
The Zakharov website presents 39 editions of Akunin’s books, including his novels about the adventures of detective Erast Fandorin .
The day before, on December 18, it became known that a criminal case had been opened against the writer under articles on justification of terrorism (205.2 of the Criminal Code) and on the dissemination of “fakes” about the army (207.3 of the Criminal Code). He was also included in the list of “terrorists and extremists” of Rosfinmonitoring. In addition to the AST publishing house, the bookstore chain “Read-Gorod” and the service “Liters” refused to distribute Akunin’s books.
This began after pro-government pranksters Lexus and Vovan published a recording of a conversation with the writer in mid-December the faces of representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, where he condemns the Russian invasion.
After the release of the recording, Akunin himself noted that he had previously publicly spoken out against the war: “In a conversation with clowns who pretended to be Ukrainians, I said the same thing that I say and write publicly <…> The fact that I supposedly agree with the thesis “a good Russian is a dead Russian” is, of course, nonsense. As is customary with this riffraff, they cut off something in my words, cheated on something, rearranged something.”
Updated at 14:08. Added details about the search progress.