20 January 2025
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Rapper Morgenstern* set to be one of the first in a barrage of arrests and confiscations of property from “slanderers” hiding abroad
Source: Novaya gazeta
On January 18th, the Savelovsky district court in Moscow, as part of a criminal case under Article 330.1 of the Russian Criminal Code (evasion of obligations stipulated by the legislation on foreign agents), seized the property of rapper Alisher Morgenstern (Valeev) in the Istra region. It’s by no means a cheap area. “Paris is well worth a mass”, as the saying goes. One might wonder why he didn’t use such a refrain to tag his advertising posts, but the musician, who left Russia in 2021, stubbornly refused to do so, with administrative proceedings against him already launched as a result.
A message that appeared on the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office Telegram channel directly linked the seizure of property to Morgenstern’s status as a “foreign agent.” But this is inaccurate. This status laid the groundwork for the initiation of a criminal case against him under Article 330.1, while Federal Law No. 11-FZ of 14.02.2024 —which served as the basis for the seizure of property— introduced the possibility of confiscating property and funds used to create “fake news” about the Russian armed forces (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code) or obtained as a result of their distribution. Confiscation under Article 104.1 of the Criminal Code as amended on 14.02.2024 can also be applied to those who are not recognized as a “foreign agent” or, conversely, received this label before the adoption of Federal Law No. 11: only the fact of “dissemination of fake news” is relevant here.
To apply, along with the main punishment (usually in the form of imprisonment “in absentia”), an additional punishment in the form of confiscation the prosecution will have to prove that Morgenstern either recorded his harmful hits in property near Istra or acquired it with the proceeds from the “fake news”. In principle, this is hardly provable, but for our courts nothing is impossible.
Meanwhile, the first victim of Federal Law No. 11 of 14.02.2024 was not Morgenstern, but Boris Akunin*, who was taken into custody in absentia by the Basmanny district court on 6 February 2024. On 27 January, the writer —who lives in London— was put on the wanted list, and on 27 February, the same court seized his wife’s accounts (as jointly acquired property) in the amount of about 6 million roubles, as part of a criminal case against the writer for “justifying terrorism”; this is where Federal Law No. 11 first proved itself useful.
In July 2024, the Oktyabrsky district court in St Petersburg confiscated the country house of journalist Aleksandr Nevzorov*, from which his mother-in-law had been evicted. Previously, the same Basmanny district court sentenced Nevzorov to 8 years’ imprisonment in absentia, while the basis for the confiscation was the recognition of the married couple as an “extremist group.”
The “law enforcement agencies” specialised in combating sedition are scrabbling to come up with a mechanism to punish the “slanderers” who have taken refuge abroad, at least “via the rouble”, since they cannot be apprehended by direct criminal repression. According to the BBC Russian Service, Roskomnadzor previously reported the initiation of 25 cases under Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code, and it itself managed to find information on 15 such cases, although no sentences have been handed down yet. The defendants in these cases (most often owing to a lack of any “foreign agent” label) to date are the singer “Monetochka”*, the editor-in-chief of Pskovskaya Gubernia Denis Kamalyagin*, the coordinators of the Golos* election monitoring movement Artem Vazhenkov* and Vladimir Zhilinsky*, and the lawyer Ivan Pavlov*, amongst others.
All the stubborn people listed will soon be deprived of the right to dispose of their property. Morgenstern was simply the first sacrificial lamb amongst this motley crew.
We tried to find out why sedition fighters chose him from Alisher’s songs, the lyrics of which are easy to find on the Internet: “Make money, @, like that! Snap your finger, and the money’s in the bank. The wildest one – that’s a fact.” “Hey, hey, ha-ha-ha-ha, yeah-yeah, baby, you got it all right… Ha-ha-ha-ha. [Chorus]: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
It may not be to everyone’s taste, but there doesn’t seem to be any explicit “anti-Sovietism” in his lyrics. Morgenstern spoke out against *** rather vaguely back in the spring of 2022. The sedition fighters chose him as the “spearhead” in this fight, probably for two reasons. Firstly, he is an iconic figure. Secondly, you can well imagine that the sort of property the likes of the editor of Pskovskaya Gubernia or the coordinators of Golos* possess pales in comparison to that of someone like Morgenstern. Not to mention that fact that seizure of a property located in the likes of Istra will likely give them something to show the “patriots” on TV.
*Added to the register of “foreign agents” by the Russian authorities.
Translated by Nathalie Wilson
