A lawyer for blogger Valeria Chekalina (ler_chek) and her husband Artem Chekalin, Konstantin Tretyakov, told Super and RIA Novosti that his clients had paid off their tax debt in full.
According to him, the couple paid off the debt of 311 million rubles on May 3. The Chekalins' accounts are frozen, so they borrowed money. Tretyakov said that bloggers are now waiting for the reaction of the investigation.
“In tax criminal cases, there is always a certain dialogue with the investigation, since the first thing the investigator voices is a proposal to voluntarily pay off the debt, as this is the basis for terminating the criminal case. All requirements FTS and the Investigative Committee on the payment of additional accrued Valery’s taxes were fulfilled,” the lawyer said.
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On the criminal case under articles on large-scale tax evasion and complicity in this (part 2 of article 198, part 2 of article 198 with the application of part 5 article 33 of the Criminal Code) against Valeria and Artem Chekalin became known in early March.
The investigation claims that from July 2020 to July 2022, the blogger was registered as an individual entrepreneur and used a simplified taxation system. According to the law, income from individual entrepreneurs should not exceed the amount of 150 million rubles a year. Chekalina, according to the security forces, earned much more, while she did not want to switch to the general taxation system and decided to transfer «extra» money to her husband's IP and «other persons from among their relatives.»
10 million subscribers have subscribed to Chekalina's Instagram page. The blogger owns her own cosmetics brand Letique Cosmetics and sells workout programs and nutrition plans. She received the bulk of her income from organizing fitness marathons.
In 2020, Chekalina ranked seventh in the list of the highest paid Russian instabloggers according to Forbes. Her income was about 600 thousand dollars.
After Chekalina, the security forces opened tax evasion cases against two other popular Instagram bloggers, Alexandra Mitroshina and Elena Blinovskaya.