Moscow’s Tverskoy court has arrested journalist of the Russian media outlet Life, Tamerlan Bigayev, over charges of extortion from the CEO of Russia’s state-owned industrial conglomerate Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, state media TASS reports, citing a court representative.
“Bigayev was given a measure of restraint in the form of imprisonment until the end of December. He is suspected in relation to part 3 of article 163 of the Criminal Code of Russia (extortion committed for the purpose of obtaining property on a particularly large scale),” the court representative informed TASS.
Bigayev worked as a celebrity gossip journalist. Life.ru also claims that he was the writer and one of the administrators of the Tushite Svet (“Turn down the lights”) Telegram channel.
In October, a Moscow court arrested Kirill Sukhanov, commercial director for Russian media personality Ksenia Sobchak, and ex-chief editor of the Tatler magazine Arian Romanovsky over charges of extortion on an especially large scale.
The investigation claims that Sukhanov and Romanovsky extorted 11 million rubles (€176,000) from the CEO of Rostec Sergey Chemezov to delete certain posts published on the Telegram channel Tushite Svet. According to the case documents, the suit was filed by Chemezov and a person “close” to him, a man with the last name Boldykhayev.
