Meduza found plagiarism in the new magazine of the Investigative Committee, of which Bastrykin became editor-in-chief

The publication Meduza discovered plagiarism in the first issue of the magazine “Investigation Established,” whose editor-in-chief is the Chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin.

One of the cases published in the first issue of the magazine was the history of the search for the “Angarsk maniac” Mikhail Popkov, who committed more than 20 murders from 1994 to 2000. The author of the article is the vice-rector of the Moscow Academy of SK Vasily Bychkov.

The publication notes that the article contains links to various sources, but among them there is no article by Mark Deitch, which was published in Moskovsky Komsomolets in January 2002. At the same time, Bychkov used Deitch’s text with minor changes. Meduza provides a detailed comparison of publications.

The magazine “Investigated by the Investigation” began publication in early April. As the press service of the Investigative Committee explained, the publication is intended for the general public and will tell “about effective forms of organizing an investigation, about extraordinary methods and combinations used to solve particularly complex and dangerous cases that have caused a public outcry.”

Last year, Novaya Gazeta journalist Nadezhda Prusenkova accused the former official representative of the Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, of plagiarism. According to her, in Markin’s book “The Most Loud Crimes of the 21st Century in Russia,” part of the chapter on the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya almost verbatim repeats Prusenkova’s article dated March 7, 2014. To this, Markin called her “a useless journalist.”

Meduza also compared the texts and showed what exactly Markin borrowed from Prusenkova.