Week-ending 2 July 2021
“The Russian authorities respond to reports of top-level corruption with impressive severity and lightning speed – except that they persecute those who expose it. After Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation’s activities were officially labelled “extremist”, it comes as no surprise that journalists from Proekt Media have had their homes raided by police – literally hours after they published their investigation into the alleged corrupt activities of the Interior Minister. This is another brazen attack on independent media and freedom of expression in Russia, and part of a systematic cleansing of any critical voices exposing the malpractices of those in power in the country. We demand an immediate termination of all criminal libel proceedings against journalists and an end to the state harassment of independent Russian media.”
– Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director in Russia: ‘Home searches of Proekt.Media journalists a shameless attack on media freedom,’ Amnesty International, 29 June 2021
Sources:
Amnesty International, 29 June 2021: Reacting to the searches this morning of the homes of three journalists from the independent Russian investigative media outlet Proekt.Media, including its Editor-in-Chief Roman Badanin, Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director, said: “The Russian authorities respond to reports of top-level corruption with impressive severity and lightning speed – except that they persecute those who expose it. After Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation’s activities were officially labelled “extremist”, it comes as no surprise that journalists from Proekt.Media have had their homes raided by police – literally hours after they published their investigation into the alleged corrupt activities of the Interior Minister.
CPJ, 29 June 2021: Russian authorities should immediately drop their investigations into journalists at the investigative news website Proekt, and ensure that the members of the press can work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Today, Moscow police raided the apartments of Proekt chief editor Roman Badanin, deputy editor Mikhail Rubin, and correspondent Mariya Zholobova, and interrogated them, according to news reports and two of the journalists’ lawyers, who spoke with CPJ.
The Guardian: Russian police have raided the apartments of several investigative journalists as they prepared to publish a report alleging that one of Vladimir Putin’s top ministers had secretly amassed a corrupt fortune. Police detained a senior editor of the Proekt investigative website and questioned two others, including the editor-in-chief, Roman Badanin, shortly before they released a damning report on the interior minister, Vladimir Kolokoltsev. In the report, they claimed his family had amassed a real estate fortune worth nearly £18m.
RFE/RL, 29 June 2021: Moscow police have carried out searches of the homes of several senior journalists at the investigative website The Project hours after it published a report questioning how Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and his relatives gained their wealth. The Project said on its Telegram channel on June 29 that police searched the home of Editor In Chief Roman Badanin, as well as that of his colleague, Maria Zholobova. The website also said that police detained Badanin’s deputy, Mikhail Rubin, near Zholobova’s home and took him to his parents’ apartment, which was also searched.
