The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow arrested until September 13 the administrator of the telegram channel «Kremlinskaya laundress» Mikhail Polyakov, Mediazona was told in the press service of the court.
Polyakov was detained early in the morning and taken for interrogation to the main investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moscow. As follows from the case file on the court's website, he is suspected in a case of extortion on a large scale (point «b» of part 3 of article 163 of the Criminal Code). The general director of the PSK Heritage company, Alexander Sanin, was also detained, the press service of the court specified. Later, the court also sent him under arrest.
RBC calls Polyakov a former FSB colonel. Blogger Sergey Karnaukhovclaims that Polyakov was in charge of UZKSin Moscow and «worked along the lines: the fight against terrorism, countering political extremism, provided an offensive fight against the non-systemic opposition.» There is no confirmation of this information. Later, Important Stories, citing an unnamed source, also said that Polyakov worked for the UZKS.
112 writes that Polyakov is associated with the telegram channels Siloviki and Brief, but they themselves deny his involvement to projects. According to Baza and Narratives, the detainee also administered the Nezygar telegram channel.
As Baza writes without citing sources, Polyakov was detained for posts containing “false and discrediting honor” information about the leadership of the Lanit IT holding, which appeared on the Nezygar and Kompromat-GROUP telegram channels in 2020.
In correspondence with a Lanit representative, administrators demanded $66,000 from the company for deleting posts and «a three-month block for publishing negative messages,» Baza claims; as a result, the management of the holding transferred about 40 million rubles to Polyakov over three years. As the newspaper notes, now there are no messages mentioning Lanita for 2020 in the Nezygar telegram channel.
The last post in the Kremlin washerwoman appeared on July 13 at 18:23 Moscow time. The channel often published derogatory posts about oppositionists and photos from searches on politically motivated cases. The Kremlin Laundress, among other things, posted materials about the anarchist Azat Miftakhov, who was convicted in the case of a broken window in the United Russia office, as well as about Alexei Navalny and his associates Maria Pevchikh, Leonid Volkov, Vladimir Milov.
Updated at 18:08 and 19:56. Added information about Alexander Sanin's arrest and a link to Important Stories.