The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow sent to pre-trial detention two heads of PR agencies who ran “popular telegram channels” about politics. The press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported about this.
According to investigators, the channels “published slanderous information about politicians, businessmen and representatives of law enforcement agencies,” and administrators demanded money from the heroes for deleting posts and “blocking negativity” .
The case is being investigated under the article on extortion (part 3 of article 163 of the Criminal Code). The Ministry of Internal Affairs considers “about 20 people” to be involved in the channels.
Neither the names of those detained or injured, nor the names of telegram channels are disclosed in the release. The Tver court database mentions decisions dated November 27 to arrest three people under this article of the Criminal Code, but the qualification of their cases refers to extortion with the use of violence.
Since 2022, police have identified the administrators of several large political telegrams at once. channels and accused them of extorting money from officials. Most often, such cases were initiated based on statements from the management of the Rostec state corporation.
On November 27, Alexandra Bayazitova, the author of the telegram channel “Hell Grandmothers” and Life.ru employee, was sent to the colony, and in May, the PR people who ran the channels “Project SCANNER” were sent to the colony. and Riddle. The alleged authors of the Kremlin Laundress channel and the former editor-in-chief of the Russian version of Tatler magazine, Arian Romanovsky, were also arrested in cases of extortion. The latter, together with Ksenia Sobchak’s commercial director Kirill Sukhanov, is accused of running a telegram channel with gossip “Lights Out,” associated with the TV presenter.