The Central District Court of Novosibirsk gave journalist Nikolai Salnikov a two-year suspended sentence in a case of extortion from a United Russia deputy from the city council. This was reported on the website of the court.
Salnikov was also fined 50 thousand rubles. Before the entry into force of the decision, he was released from the pre-trial detention center and released in the courtroom.
In March 2021, Salnikov posted on YouTube 18 minute video about the history of the sports club «Success», people from which now hold positions in the Novosibirsk city council, as well as the legislative assembly and the government of the region.
The video was called «From racketeers to deputies.» Salnikov said there that «Success» was «an odious and powerful criminal community that easily and without loss stepped over the millennium and today has firmly grown into all layers of power in Novosibirsk and the Novosibirsk region.»
In addition to Tarasov, the video also mentioned the deputy of the regional parliament Veniamin Pak, the minister of industry and trade of the region Andrei Goncharov and the speaker of the city council Dmitry Asantsev.
The prosecutor's office told NGS.ru that, according to investigators, after the video was released on YouTube Tarasov, through a friend, demanded that Salnikov delete the video, and he asked for 20 million rubles for this, promising to release the second part of the investigation, and soon reduced the amount to 9 million rubles.
Salnikov, along with businessman and former candidate for mayor of Novosibirsk, Sergei Pronichev, was detained in April 2021 while receiving 1.5 million rubles and sent to a pre-trial detention center. Salnikov pleaded guilty. After the journalist was placed under house arrest in August, Salnikov left for Nizhny Novgorod and was arrested again.
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Salnikov was accused of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code), however, during the debate, as NGS.ru notes, an employee of the prosecutor's office asked to mitigate the charge to attempted murder fraud (part 3 of article 30, part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code). The Interior Ministry completed its investigation into the Pronichev case in December. Witnesses in the case said that he himself refused to participate in the scheme.
Salnikov used to work for the state TV channel OTS. In 2019, he publicly criticized the decision of the federal authorities not to put out fires in Siberia and left the UTS two weeks later. After his dismissal, Salnikov created the political movement «Regions of Russia», in September 2020 he ran for the local legislative assembly.
The UTS channel posted footage of the detention of Salnikov and Pronichev.