In Moscow, two security guards who beat a Kommersant correspondent for a photo with exchange rates were sentenced to real terms

The Dorogomilovsky District Court of Moscow sentenced security guards of the currency exchange office Sergei Grebenyukov and Roman Moskovsky to real terms in the case of beating a Kommersant journalist. This was reported by the Prosecutor General's Office and the joint press service of the capital's courts.

Grebenyukov was sentenced to two years in a general regime colony, and Moskovsky was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. They were both found guilty of obstructing journalistic activities with the use of violence (Part 3 of Article 144 of the Criminal Code) and were taken into custody in the courtroom.

According to investigators, in November 2020, security guards beat Kommersant correspondent Anatoly Zhdanov, who, on an editorial assignment, photographed a board with exchange rates near house number 18 on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow.

Seeing that the journalist had taken photographs, the guards demanded that the photographs be deleted, and when Zhdanov refused, they used force against him. “They hit me in the face, then knocked me down until I agreed to show the photo,” said the photojournalist.

As writes Kommersant , later the journalist, under pressure from the convicts, nevertheless deleted the photographs, after which the guards decided to take the camera away from him, but he managed to escape. The publication suggests that the reason for the aggressive reaction to the photo was that the exchange office was operating illegally.