“I left for Lithuania through Belarus”: RT source called Sobchak a defendant in the extortion case

In the Moscow region house of TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak in the elite cottage village Gorki-8, searches were carried out in a criminal case of extortion.

The day before, an employee of the Sobchak team, Kirill Sukhanov, was detained on suspicion of extortion “for non-dissemination of information.”

The case is handled by the Main Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

According to an RT source, Ksenia Sobchak learned about the upcoming searches in a day, after which the shooting with her participation, scheduled for the coming days, was urgently canceled.

The TV presenter left Russia even before the arrest of Kirill Sukhanov - she left for Lithuania through the territory of Belarus.

“I crossed the border with the Republic of Belarus by car (where there is no control) and went along the border to Europe.

Further on, at the Vidzy checkpoint, she crossed the border with the Republic of Lithuania.

In addition to her, there were three other passengers in the car, ”the source said.

He added that Sobchak owns a Telegram channel, for which money was allegedly extorted for non-dissemination of negative information.

Sobchak could have been detained if she had not left the country on time.

According to media reports, the employees of the projects run by the TV presenter were also warned in advance about possible searches in their offices.

In this regard, the Sobchak team was advised not to come to work on October 26.

In the Telegram channel, the TV presenter has already commented on the searches in her house.

In particular, she lamented that the authorities "constantly detain her journalists."

And she added that her team's lawyer is in touch with Sukhanov.

Case of extortion

In the case of extortion, in addition to Kirill Sukhanov, the former editor-in-chief of Tatler, Arian Romanovsky, is also being held.

Both men were detained on the evening of October 24 near the Regent restaurant in Plotnikov Lane in Moscow.

There, the men had a working meeting, at which the issue of paying for a "block on the negative" in the Telegram channel was to be discussed.

The president of Condé Nast Russia, Anita Gigovskaya, refused to comment on RT news about the arrest and the criminal case against the former editor-in-chief of Tatler, Arian Romanovsky.

Romanovsky's lawyer Gadzhi Aliyev told RT that the security forces had charged his client under Part 3 of Art.

163 (extortion on an especially large scale).

“Today, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow was supposed to choose a measure of restraint for Aryan,” Haji Aliyev said.

“However, he has not yet been brought to court, and there has not yet been a hearing.” 

According to the lawyer, Romanovsky does not admit his guilt.

In the near future, the court should also bring charges against Kirill Sukhanov.

Punishment under the criminal article under which men are held can be up to 15 years in prison.

Detentions of bloggers

Previously, an article about extortion has already caused the arrest of some bloggers and admins of Telegram channels.

For example, in the summer, the media reported on the arrest of several journalists and administrators of the Telegram channels of the Kraken network (Evgeny Moskvin, Alexei Slobodenyuk and Vladislav Malushenko).

In early August, Alexandra Bayazitova, the author of the Hellish Grandmothers Telegram channel, as well as businesswoman Olga Arkharova and PR manager Inna Churilova, were arrested on the same charges.

At the end of September, Stanislav Sadovy, the administrator of the Telegram channel, was detained on suspicion of extortion.

The investigators concluded that the authors of a number of Telegram channels took money from high-ranking newsmakers for “not posting negative content in their information channels” about those who paid.

Such actions were regarded by the investigation as extortion of money.

The current investigation against Kirill Sukhanov is not the first recent criminal case related to the team or projects of Ksenia Sobchak.

In August, Sergey Yerzhenkov, a journalist from the film crew of Ksenia Sobchak, appeared before the Kasimovsky District Court in Ryazan on charges of vandalism.

In April, a man and a friend desecrated a monument to Lenin in the city of Kasimov, covering the monument with paint.

As a result, the court imposed a fine of 15 thousand rubles on the director and dismissed the case.

The prosecutor's office intended to appeal against the "too soft", according to representatives of the supervisory department, the decision of the Ryazan court.