On the 12th of February, a Moscow court sentenced three former employees of Russian influencer Ksenia Sobchak to 7.5 and seven years in prison for trying to extort money from Sergey Chemezov, head of state-owned defence conglomerate Rostec, reports The Moscow Times.
According to the media, the case was opened in August 2022 at the request of Sergey Chemezov, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin and head of Rostec, who accused the administrators of several Telegram news channels of extorting money in exchange for not reporting negative news in the media and alleged that Kirill Sukhanov, the former business manager of Sobchak’s media group Ostorozhno, Media, tried to extort 11 million roubles from him.
Suhanov was detained in October 2022 in a Moscow restaurant while receiving cash from Andrei Baldukhaev, Chemezov’s representative. Arian Romanovsky, former editor of the fashion magazine Tatler Russia, was also detained with Sukhanov. A few days later, Tamerlan Bigaev, a former journalist of the pro-Kremlin tabloid Life.ru, was detained on the same charges.
A Moscow court found all three guilty of extortion and sentenced Sukhanov to 7.5 years
in a maximum-security prison. But Romanovsky and Bigaev each received seven years also in a maximum-security prison.
All three pleaded not guilty to the extortion charges. Suhanov admitted receiving 800 000 roubles at the restaurant, but denied having access to the Telegram channel where incriminating information about Chemezov was published.
Sobchak, who in November 2022 visited Rostec’s office following the accusations and publicly apologised, called Monday’s verdict “more than an injustice”, writing on her Telegram channel that she had fulfilled her obligations to reach an understanding regarding Sukhanov, Romanovsky and Bigaev.
“Why ruin the lives of young people?” she added. “Why such disproportion? For what? 7.5 years? To get revenge?”
Sobchak also spoke out about the punishment on Instagram, posting a black picture and writing that the punishment was equivalent to murder. “No words can describe how I, family and friends feel,” Sobchak wrote.
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