The chief editor of the online publication Dossier.Ru, Yulia Pelekhova, could be sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of extortion. This punishment was demanded by the state prosecutor at the trial, which resumed in the Tverskoy Court of Moscow, as reported on the Rossiyskaya Gazeta website.

Pelekhova’s case was initiated at the request of businesswoman Oksana Tokareva, who contacted the Department for Combating Economic Crimes in January of this year. Tokareva said that at the beginning of 2002, Pelekhova interviewed her in connection with the initiation of a criminal case regarding the issue of foreign currency bills by the Sakha-Credit Bank.

According to the businesswoman, in early December 2003, Pelekhova told her that, as part of a journalistic investigation, she had collected incriminating materials and threatened to transfer them to the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia and the FSB, as well as publish them in the media. In exchange for non-distribution of these materials, Pelekhova allegedly demanded 150 thousand dollars.

According to investigators, at the beginning of January 2004, Tokareva and Pelekhova entered into an agreement, under the terms of which the entrepreneur agreed to pay $100 thousand in three installments.

Pelekhova was detained on January 28 of this year in one of the Moscow restaurants at the time of handing over 40 thousand dollars to her. Two days later, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of the journalist. At the trial, Pelekhova refused to admit his guilt.

Chief editor of Dossier.Ru may get eight years in prison