“Important stories”: the arrested administrator of the telegram channel “Kremlin Laundress” worked in the FSB service, which deals with political persecution

Mikhail Polyakov, the administrator of the Kremlin laundress telegram channel, arrested in the case of extortion, until 2022 headed one of the services in the Office for the Protection of the Constitutional Order of the FSB in Moscow and the Moscow Region - this service is engaged in political persecution, they write "Important stories" with reference to their own a source close to the intelligence services.

According to the source of the publication, Polyakov oversaw a network of pro-government telegram channels in agreement with the first deputy head of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation, Sergei Kiriyenko, and also carried out orders from the Moscow mayor's office.

In addition, the former FSB colonel worked together with the head of the Internet Development Institute Alexei Goreslavsky. The publication clarifies that the structures controlled by Goreslavsky were also engaged in promoting the Kremlin agenda in the media and social networks.

According to the interlocutor of the publication, Polyakov was arrested because he began to “do business” in pro-Kremlin telegram channels without the consent of the leadership.

• The Tverskoy Court of Moscow arrested Mikhail Polyakov in a case of extortion on an especially large scale on July 15. According to investigators, from 2020 to 2023, Polyakov “received a large sum of money” from the Lanit IT holding for “blocking negative” — that is, for promising not to publish information in telegram channels that could harm the interests of the holding and its guides. The Telegram channel Baza wrote that Polyakov received about 40 million rubles from the holding.
• The court also arrested Alexander Sanin, director general of the PSK Heritage company. He is also charged with extortion on an especially large scale.
• Earlier, Meduza wrote about another alleged member of the FSB’s service for protecting the constitutional order, Alexei Shcheglov, a staff member of the Russian Presidential Administration. He was a key witness in the case of Alexander Gusov, the owner of the Novy Vek telegram channel, who was accused by Yota co-founder Albert Avdolyan of extorting 12 million rubles for a “block on the negative.” From Shcheglov’s testimony presented in court, it followed that he, being “Avdolyan’s confidant,” transferred 350 thousand rubles to Gusov every month from 2020 to 2023, and stopped doing this only at the beginning of 2023, when he was called to the police “to talk about Gusov.