The leading Telegram channels were sentenced to 8 years for extortion from Kandelaki

On Monday, a court in Moscow sentenced three former administrators of Riddle and “Project SCANNER” telegram channels to eight years in prison each. The Khamovniche court found Alexey Slobodenyuk, Evgeny Moskvin and Vladyslav Malushenko guilty of extorting 470,000 rubles from TV presenter Tina Kandelaka and her husband, the director of “Rostech” on the special instructions of Vasily Brovko. They were also fined 500,000 rubles each, TASS reports.

Earlier it was reported that all three pleaded guilty in court and apologized.

According to the investigation, the administrators of the Telegram channels published articles about Brovko and Kandelaki, “negatively covering their work and personal life”, after which they demanded money to remove the publication. All three were arrested in August. Earlier it was reported that they worked in the media group “Patriot”, which is connected with the founder of PMC “Wagner” Evgeny Prigozhin.

The “Project SCANNER” channel, with approximately 200,000 subscribers, published news critical of the government, including officials at all levels and the United Russia party. During the protests of 2019 in Moscow, the channel published the personal data of policemen and Russian Guardsmen who were seen during the dispersal of protests. After the start of the war in Ukraine, criticism of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu became more frequent in it. At the same time, the author of the opposition Telegram channel “Municipal Scanner” Ruslan Leviev claimed that “Project SCANER” is a “spoiler” of this channel; the Riddle channel, in turn, is similar in name to another channel critical of the authorities – Riddle Russia.

The massive criminal prosecution of the creators of anonymous Telegram channels, as stated in the Meduza and The Bell investigations, began in the summer of 2022. Criminal cases are initiated at the initiative of “Rostech” on charges of extortion. According to the investigation, the representatives of the corporation personally contact the owners of the channels in order to conclude a deal on “block on negativity” (money in exchange for the absence of negative publications about certain persons), and then the owners of the channel are accused of extortion.

Several Telegram channel administrators were arrested at once on charges of extortion from Brovko or his boss Sergey Chemezov.

In August, the alleged administrators of the channels “Finansovy karaulny”, “Hadskie bky”, “E-magiya” and others were detained, including the former journalist of “Izvestia” Alexandra Bayazitova. She is still in pretrial detention.

In October last year, the court in Moscow sent Kirill Sukhanov, commercial director of journalist and media manager Ksenia Sobchak, and former Tatler editor-in-chief Arian Romanovsky to pre-trial detention. Sobchak, who had a conflict with Tina Kandelaki, almost ended up under arrest, as stated in the “Project” investigation. However, as the “Project” claims, President Vladimir Putin did not sanction her arrest.

In November, Anatoliy Spiryn, the creator of the “Kak-to vot tak” Telegram channel, was arrested on charges of extortion from Vasyl Brovko.

In the “Project” investigation, it was noted that Brovko could be the initiator of criminal cases against at least 13 people. Rostec did not comment on this or other publications about Brovko’s connection with the persecution of channel administrators.