The Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the arrest of two administrators of telegram channels in the case of extortion

The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow sent to pre-trial detention two heads of PR agencies who ran “popular telegram channels” about politics. about this . reported The press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

According to investigators, the channels “published slanderous information about politicians, businessmen and representatives of law enforcement agencies,” and administrators demanded money from the heroes for deleting posts and “blocking negativity.”

The case is being investigated under the article on extortion (Part 3 of Article 163 of the Criminal Code). The Ministry of Internal Affairs considers “about 20 people” to be involved in the channels.

Neither the names of those detained or injured, nor the names of telegram channels are disclosed in the release. The database of the Tver court mentions decisions of November 27 to arrest three people under this article of the Criminal Code, but the qualification of their cases refers to extortion with the use of violence.

Since 2022, police have identified the administrators of several large political telegram channels and accused them of extorting money from officials. Most often, such cases were initiated based on statements from the management of the Rostec state corporation.

On November 27, employee Alexandra Bayazitova was sent the author of the telegram channel “Hell Grandmothers” and Life.ru to the colony , and in May, the PR people who ran the channels “Project SCANNER” and Riddle were sent to the colony . in cases of extortion magazine, Arian Romanovsky, were also arrested The alleged authors of the Kremlin Laundress channel and the former editor-in-chief of the Russian version of Tatler . The latter, together with Ksenia Sobchak’s commercial director Kirill Sukhanov, is accused of running a telegram channel with gossip “Lights Out,” associated with the TV presenter.