The court arrested the administrator of the telegram channel “Kremlin Laundress” Mikhail Polyakov in a case of extortion

The Tverskoy Court of Moscow has arrested Mikhail Polyakov, the administrator of the telegram channel Kremlin Laundress, Mikhail Polyakov, Mediazona reports with reference to the press service of the court.

According to the case file , Polyakov, whom RBC calls a former FSB colonel, is suspected of extortion on an especially large scale. Polyakov was detained on July 14, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

The telegram channel Baza claims that the case against Polyakov was initiated due to the fact that he received about 40 million rubles from the Lanit IT holding for deleting posts in the telegram channels Nezygar and Kompromat-GROUP, which allegedly contained false and discrediting information about the management of the holding, as well as for blocking the release of negative materials in these channels in the period from 2020 to 2023.

RBC writes that the second defendant in the case is the general director of the PSK Heritage company Alexander Sanin. The press service of the court confirmed to Mediazone that he had been detained. According to the case card , he is also charged with extortion on an especially large scale.

Telegram channel "Caution, news" reports that Sanin was arrested for two months.

• The telegram channel "Kremlin Laundress" has more than 260 thousand subscribers. The last post there was published on the evening of July 13th. The channel has not been updated since.
• In 2022, the police detained the administrators and authors of several anonymous Telegram channels on charges of extorting money from officials and businessmen. Among the detainees were commercial director of Ksenia Sobchak Kirill Sukhanov, former editor-in-chief of Tatler Arian Romanovsky, journalist Alexandra Bayazitova. According to investigators, they extorted money from the head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, for blocking the release of negative materials.