TV presenter Andrey Karaulov became a defendant in a criminal case of libel (Article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) against director Nikita Mikhalkov. According to TASS, searches took place at almost 20 addresses in Moscow and the Moscow region, which, according to the police, are associated with the journalist.
The reason for the criminal prosecution was "the fact that a journalist publicly accused the director of allegedly cutting down forests in the Nizhny Novgorod region." Initially, the case was initiated in Nizhny Novgorod, but then transferred to Moscow, where another libel case is being investigated against Karaulov, TASS clarifies. The journalist himself, according to the agency, is in the UAE.
In November, Karaulov said that his house was searched and that this was connected with a criminal libel case that was initiated at the request of the head of the Rostec state corporation, Sergei Chemezov. At the end of October, in an extortion case involving Chemezov, the court arrested Kirill Sukhanov, commercial director of Ksenia Sobchak's Caution Media media holding, and Arian Romanovsky, former editor-in-chief of Tatler. Sobchak herself was searched, she left Russia for a while.
Earlier, a court in the Nizhny Novgorod region found Alexander Fayb, a resident of Moscow, the general director of Mediamarker LLC, guilty of slandering Nikita Mikhalkov and sentenced him to 200 hours of compulsory work as a punishment. Faib was accused of having created and published on the Internet a video clip “Nikita Mikhalkov cuts down a Russian forest. The reactions of the people ."