St. Petersburg court sends former head of Prigozhin's "troll factory" to pretrial detention in extortion case

The Petrogradsky District Court of St. Petersburg has sent media manager Ilya Gorbunov, who is associated with the Patriot holding company of Yevgeny Prigozhin, to pretrial detention. This was reported by the joint press service of the city's courts.

Gorbunov is suspected of extortion on an especially large scale (clause "b" of part 3 of article 163 of the Criminal Code). According to the investigation, the St. Petersburg resident extorted money from the chairman of the board of the New Media Development Fund M. "under the threat of disseminating information that disgraces the latter or his relatives."

From April 23 to June 11, as the press service of the courts of St. Petersburg wrote , Gorbunov began to disseminate information that discredited the honor and dignity of M., and then, at a meeting, demanded four million rubles from him. On June 21, the chairman of the board of the New Media Development Fund transferred part of these funds - 1 million 520 thousand rubles - to Gorbunov. The next day, the media manager was detained.

The victim in the case is the former CEO of the TV channel "Saint Petersburg" Alexander Malkevich, who is on the board of the New Media Development Fund. "Rotonda" wrote that the reason for the persecution of Gorbunov was a statement Malkevich filed with the police.

According to the publication, during Prigozhin's life, the media manager was involved in the "troll factory", and after the death of his boss, he began to regain control over Telegram channels associated with the Patriot media group. He also offered Yevgeny Prigozhin's son Pavel to use his father's media resources "to solve business problems", but he refused.

On June 19, the editor-in-chief of Konkretno.ru, Kirill Metelev, was arrested in connection with the same extortion case. On June 21, the Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg ordered him to be banned from certain actions as a preventive measure. According to information from the city courts' press service, the editor-in-chief extorted $10,000 from Malkevich under the threat of defamatory publications on Konkretno.ru and other websites controlled by the publication.

According to Rotunda, Metelev's resources "often posted information that looked like it was ordered." Journalist Andrei Zakharov also reported that the editor-in-chief of Konkretno.ru was not closely connected with Prigozhin, but "his resources periodically participated in Prigozhin's information campaigns" for money.