In 2021, Vladimir Osechkin, who has been living in France since 2015, started wallets in the ethereum (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC) cryptocurrencies. He began to use them to receive donations. $2583 (0.1 BTC) came to the bitcoin wallet for all the time. For Ethereum — $73,613 (19.4 ETH) in terms of withdrawal dates.
Sponsors transferring coins to Osechkin use the Kraken, Binance and Coinbase exchanges, according to the Bitquery analyzer. Osechkin withdraws donations and converts them into dollars using the Binance exchange. He also uses the OKX exchange, one of the few that has not imposed sanctions against users with Russian passports. In October 2022, Roskomnadzor restricted access to the exchange.
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Sometimes large donations coincided with loud statements, live broadcasts or the publication of testimonies about abuses in Russian colonies that Osechkin and his team make.
For example, on April 12, 2022, a $5 thousand USDC stablecoin token was credited to the Ethereum account.
The Human Rights Underside
The largest tranche took place a year and a half ago. It was the first in the history of wallet transactions - on October 5, 2021, 14.53 ETH was transferred to Osechkin, which was $49.1 thousand on the date of the transaction.
The sender withdrew at least 8.12 ETH of them from the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, then transferred it to an intermediate wallet and only then transferred it to Osechkin.
It was on October 5, 2021 that Osechkin's Gulagu.net project published the first video in a series of recordings proving the facts of torture of prisoners in the Regional Tuberculosis Hospital (OTB-1) of the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Saratov Region.
After investigating the events captured on the recording, cases were initiated against the officials of the colony. The former head of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, Alexander Kalashnikov, lost his post, RT wrote.
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Now Osechkin is focused on finding evidence of the recruitment of prisoners from places of detention of the Russian Federation, which is carried out by the Wagner PMC to participate in the armed conflict with Ukraine. He regularly organizes live broadcasts on these topics and criticizes the actions of the head of PMCs Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Large donations that come on the days of high-profile publications or streams are more like fees from sponsors, says Ivan Solovyov, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation, former head of the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation.
"The collective West has long used cases of infringement of the rights of prisoners in Russia for political purposes in order to expose us in the international arena as beasts, to denigrate the image of our state," says Solovyov. "And pseudo-human rights activists like Osechkin, who collaborate with Western influence groups, get paid for their revelations."
Experienced swindler
Businessman Osechkin was first convicted of fraud in 2007 and became known thanks to the project to protect the rights of prisoners "Gulag.net".
Since the spring of 2022, Osechkin has been publicly criticizing the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine. In October 2022, a criminal case was opened against him under the article on spreading fakes about the actions of the Russian army. The reason was his statements on the YouTube channel.
This is not the first criminal case that is being investigated against Osechkin. In 2015, a criminal case was opened against him under Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Fraud on an especially large scale").
The case was initiated at the request of Natalia Malinina, the daughter of the former prefect of the Southern Administrative District of Moscow, Oleg Malinin, who was accused of corruption in 2013.
She claimed that Osechkin and his partners took 2.5 million rubles from her for organizing speeches on radio stations and in the program "Moment of Truth" by Andrei Karaulov, as well as for legal assistance to her father. Osechkin did not fulfill the promise, and Malinina went with a statement to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.
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Since 2015, Osechkin has been living in France, where he is hiding from criminal prosecution after his business partner Denis Soldatov began testifying against him in a fraud case.
According to the register of legal entities in France, in 2018 Osechkin opened a private enterprise - an analogue of the Russian IP, which receives income from the activities of his Internet portal. The individual entrepreneur is registered at his address in the resort of Biarritz, where he lives in a private house.
Osechkin is also known for his highly controversial project of so-called prisoner insurance. On his website, he promises to insure the life and health of a prisoner in prison for 5-15 thousand rubles.
The human rights activist claims that this will supposedly save the prisoner from abuse of the penitentiary system and arbitrariness of the Federal Penitentiary Service.
The head of the Human Rights Committee Against Torture, Igor Kalyapin, claims that the insurance project was originally created to make money on prisoners. In his opinion, it is impossible to prove the illegal actions of employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs in this way.
Under the current legislation, the insurance agent cannot get into the zone to investigate the insured event, therefore, the prisoner and his family will not receive any payments.
* Vladimir Osechkin was recognized as a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated January 20, 01