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Journalists from Ivanovo were placed under house arrest for publishing incriminating evidence

On Saturday, the Khoroshevsky Court of Moscow decided to place three journalists from Ivanovo under house arrest, who are accused of publishing ordered materials in the media. A criminal case was opened on January 11 by investigators of the Internal Affairs Directorate for the North-Western Administrative District of the capital against the head of Iv-Press LLC and the founder of the Ivanovo-Press newspaper Galina Yablokova, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Valery Smetanin, as well as Ms. Yablokova’s son and the author a number of articles by Alexey Yablokov. They are suspected of publishing an article compromising the deputy chairman of the government of the Ivanovo region, 33-year-old Maxim Polyakov.

The material was published under the title “Favourite or Minion of Fate?” and told about the career of an official. According to the investigation, the article was written in the interests of a certain citizen V.N. Sopin, who paid 1.5 thousand euros for it. Earlier, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Central Federal District, reporting on the detention of journalists, stated that the accused prepared a whole series of similar materials, “knowing about the deliberate unreliability of the information disseminated,” and at the same time, “the cost of one publication ranged from one to 10 thousand euros.” The journalists were charged under Part 4 of Art. 204 of the Criminal Code - commercial bribery committed by an organized group.

As Vremya Novostei learned, during the preliminary investigation it was established that Smetanin and mother and son Yablokov met on December 17 last year in the Moscow restaurant Ermak with citizen Sopin, where they received from the latter 750 euros - an advance for the publication of compromising evidence on Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Ivanovo Region in the newspaper “Ivanovo-Press”. Article “Favorite or darling of fate?” published on December 22. The next day, the newspaper's editor-in-chief again met with the customer at the Ermak restaurant, where he handed over the publication to Mr. Sopin and received from him another 750 euros as payment for the work performed.

In addition, according to the investigation, on January 27 of the current year, already in Ivanovo, the founder of the newspaper, Ms. Yablokova, “while on the premises of the FCB Uniastrum Bank” received 140 thousand rubles. for an article of a compromising nature regarding the government of the Ivanovo region previously published in the Ivanovo-Press newspaper.” Investigators also alleged that the Yablokovs conducted “negotiations on the publication of a number of articles of a compromising nature for a monetary reward” on the same topic in the interests of the same Sopin. All these articles, as the prosecution believes, were written in violation of the law “On the Mass Media”. Namely Art. 4 “Inadmissibility of abuse of freedom of mass information”, Art. 51 “Inadmissibility of abuse of the rights of a journalist” and Art. 59, which speaks of liability for violation by journalists of the two above-mentioned articles. The journalists were detained in Ivanovo last week and then transferred to Moscow.

At a meeting of the Khoroshevsky court on the issue of choosing a preventive measure for the three suspects, which took place last Saturday, a representative of the investigation asked them to be arrested and sent to prison. However, the court decided that it did not find any convincing arguments that Smetanin and the Yablokovs would hide from the investigation or put pressure on witnesses if they remained free. In addition, the court took into account that all three were brought to criminal responsibility for the first time and did not avoid appearing before the investigator. And their lack of registration in Moscow, the presence of foreign passports and charges of committing a serious crime, as follows from the court decision, do not yet indicate that they need to be put in prison. For the investigation to go smoothly, it is enough to place the journalists under house arrest, the court decided. At the same time, they were prohibited from communicating with each other, receiving and sending correspondence, making messages, statements, appeals through the media, negotiating using any means of communication (including landline and mobile phones, fax, e-mail, the Internet), as well as leaving home .

Ekaterina BUTORINA