All fairy tales have an ending

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On March 7, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Valeria Chekalina and her husband Artem Chekalin. They are bloggers: Valeria writes about a healthy lifestyle, conducts fitness marathons, and also sells training programs and nutrition plans. on her Instagram She has over 10.5 million followers . Her husband's account, which writes about their family and children, has more than 4 million. According to Forbes, in 2020, the girl ranked seventh in the ranking of the highest paid Russian Instagram bloggers, and her annual income was about 600 thousand dollars. In addition to the blog, Chekalina is engaged in her own brand of cosmetics Letique Cosmetics. According to RBC, in 2021 Chekalina's company earned 657.8 million rubles.

What exactly are the Chekalins accused of?

In tax evasion. Chekalina is registered as an individual entrepreneur and uses a simplified taxation system that limits annual income to 150 million rubles. According to the Investigative Committee, from July 2020 to July 2022, the blogger’s income significantly exceeded this limit.

But instead of switching to a general taxation system, according to investigators, she transferred part of her income to the IP of her relatives, including her husband. “Thus, <...> illegally split up the business and evaded paying taxes,” the agency’s press release reads. According to security officials, Chekalina did not pay more than 300 million rubles.

The second violation , according to investigators, is that Chekalina and her husband in April 2021 purchased dollars worth more than 130 million rubles - by doing this they allegedly "camouflaged the connection of legalized funds with the criminal source of their origin." Why the UK is sure that the blogger's income was obtained by criminal means is not indicated in the message. The Chekalins' apartment was searched.

The case was opened under the article on money laundering by a group of persons on an especially large scale. According to it, Chekalin faces up to seven years in prison. On March 16, Moscow's Savelovsky Court banned Valeria and Artem Chekalin from using the Internet, communicating with witnesses and "accomplices" (except for close relatives), and using mail and telephone. The investigators also took a written undertaking not to leave the Chekalins.

Who else is being chased?

Just a couple of weeks after the search at the Chekalins, investigators came for another well-known blogger. A criminal case was opened against 28-year-old Alexandra Mitroshina. She is accused of tax evasion for 120 million rubles.

Mitroshina started blogging on Instagram in 2011, she initially wrote about gadgets and travel, but became popular after she shifted her focus to content about fitness and a healthy lifestyle. A few years later, she began to engage in training courses on social media promotion. Her most popular project is "Instalogia": a training course on promoting a blog on Instagram. The cost of such a course is from 110 thousand to 1 million rubles. According to Mitroshina, in 2021, personal projects brought her about 303 million rubles.

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Alexandra Mitroshina recorded an appeal to subscribers in which she spoke out against the war and the actions of the Russian authorities. “It seems to me that what is happening is just terribly wrong and very embarrassing for me as a citizen of Russia,” Mitroshina said and promised that she would participate in protests. On February 28, 2022, Mitroshina moved to Dubai. Mitroshina also actively covered the problem of domestic violence. In August 2019, together with human rights activist Alena Popova, Mitroshina launched the You Are Not Alone project to help victims of domestic violence.

Criminal cases - a government campaign against bloggers?

The head of the Safe Internet League, Ekaterina Mizulina, said in her video message that the state intends to “bring order in this area.” Mizulina called the activities of some bloggers “infogypsy”, and they themselves are people who earn “billions” and deceive the tax system.

“Bloggers have been outside the attention and control of the tax authorities for a long time, receiving billions in income,” Mizulina said. “The public has been warning the authorities about these risks for a long time. We strongly encourage all major bloggers to think, pay their taxes and live in peace.”

According to Novaya Gazeta, a large-scale audit of the Federal Tax Service awaits several dozen Internet stars. Among them are the founder of the Transformer business club Dmitry Portnyagin, the author of the Marathon of Desires Elena Blinovskaya, the wife of rapper Dzhigan Oksana Samoilova, TV presenter Victoria Bonya and many others . be called something new, and a series of cases against influencers and public opinion leaders is “a consequence of the completely systemic policy of the Federal Tax Service.”

“Given the economic situation, this attention of the state is unlikely to weaken. So big bloggers should be very careful about the execution of financial flows and reporting on them,” Timchenko told Novaya Gazeta. Vadim Bagaturia, a partner at the Freitak and Sons Bar Association, also believes that officials want to replenish the state budget at the expense of bloggers.

“There is such a thesis: “People are the new oil in Russia”. Now revenues from individual entrepreneurs and individuals exceed a third of the country's budget,” Bagaturia explained in an interview with RTVI. “And for this money, frankly, the state will screw them up and continue to tighten the screws – of course, this should be expected.”

How do their subscribers react to the persecution of bloggers?

In the comments under Mitroshina's posts, users often ask her to comment on the situation with non-payment of taxes, however, apparently, Mitroshina deletes such comments.

“I hasten to note that my question-request to comment on non-payment of taxes under this post seems to have been deleted. Well, then, besides taxes, I want to ask: how can a person who actively advocates for women's rights live in Dubai? - writes one of the subscribers.

Another part of the users comes out in defense of Mitroshina. They urge not to discuss the situation with taxes in the comments: “Guys, Sasha gives so much useful information, and here taxes are through every message. Do you really need it?"

Valeria Chekalina's account is now closed, but comments about the criminal case are left on her husband's page. Many people ask themselves, “What was the problem with paying taxes on time?”.

“Well, all fairy tales come to an end. It's not normal to get billions almost out of thin air. I do not wish anything bad on the family, but if this is all true, then it was illegal and dishonest. Big money is always hard to come by, life is not a fairy tale,” a subscriber writes in the comments.