Fontanka Finds Links Between Prigozhin’s ‘Kremlin Troll Factory,’ Wagner Military Contractor, and Attacks on Journalists

The State Duma has passed a law in the third reading regulating the activity of debt collectors, Novaya Gazeta reported, citing RIA Novosti.

Persons who have a court sentence that has not yet been served or removed cannot contact debtors. 

Russian debt collectors have used the tactics familiar to Westerners of calling repeatedly at all hours, but in numerous cases have gone way beyond them, damaging their cars, injecting glue in their door locks, and posting their phone numbers on prostitutes’ websites, the LA Times reported.

The law represents an effort to cope with some of the outrageous practices of debt collection agencies as Russians grow more desperate in the economic crisis. As the New York Times reported, the tactics used are reminiscent of the mob.

There have been cases  of sex abuse, the breaking of a woman’s finger and even the burning of a toddler in the firebombing of a house. The violence seems particular prevalent in small debts as physical force makes it easier to collect debts, one former debt collector told the Times.

In the case of the firebombing, the Moscow Times reported that Ismail Guseinov, a grandfather, turned to a pay-day lender to obtain a high-interest loan of 4,000 rubles ($50) to pay for medicine for a bad back. But soon he fell behind on payments and debt collectors demanded ten times the original sum 40,000 rubles.

First, they threw a brick through his window with a message, “We’ll burn your house down.” Then they began calling Guseinov’s children. Finally, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the wooden house, burning Guseinov’s grand son badly. The incident galvanized press to cover the issue and people to complain about the heavy-handed methods.

Last year, the amount of unpaid debt in Russia surged by almost 50 percent to $15 billion, and the total number of debtors as of April was 7.5 million, the New York Times reported.

The different angles the Russian media has taken in reporting this issue, and the statistics available from official agencies, may make it difficult to grasp the extent of the problem. 

Vedomosti reported that more than 4.5 million Russians owed debts to banks and companies over 10,000 rubles and were at risk for being barred from travel from Russia.

According to this report, the number of debtors increased by 28.6% since June 2015. 

Vedomosti also reported that more than 1.2 million new court decisions were issued in the first four months of 2016 banning debtors from travel, up from 342,000 such decisions issued for the first 4 months of 2015.

But a representative of the Federal Bailiffs Service said that some people, upon having such a restriction imposed, immediately pay their debts, and as of June 10, the figure for the year so far was down to 702,200.

In fact, the law restricting debt collectors’ practices has been passed just as at least one category of debtors have succeeded in reducing their unpaid loans, RBC reports.

As of June 1, 2015, according to the National Bureau of Credit Histories, the number of debtors owning less than 30,000 rubles was 13.7 million, 38 % of all debtors, or 35.6 million. Today, the figure of those with debts less than 30,000 is 10.7 million, or 30% of all debtors; thus the figure is 6% lower than last year..

But the number of Russians who owe debts of higher amounts has increased. The number of those who owe from 30,000 to 100,000 rubles has increased from 6.5 million to 7.4 million. And those who owe banks more than 1.4 million rubles has increased from 1.3 million to 1.4 million in a year.

The reduction in the number of debtors appears to be a factor of banks themselves restructuring their portfolios from smaller loans that are quickly repaid to long-term loans that take longer to pay. Banks have also tightened up their risk analysis for loans, giving out far fewer loans without collateral.

— Catherine A. Fitzpatrick 

Fontanka.ru, the independent St. Petersburg news site, has published an unsigned article today, June 21, titled “Hell’s Kitchen” about the “Kremlin trolls’ factory” harassment of journalists. The article has been summarized in Russian by Novaya Gazeta and briefly in English by Meduza.

The article sheds light on the shadowy world of the privatization of functions that the old Soviet secret police used to perform by companies run by former policemen. 

Fontanka says that Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ex-con and caterer who founded the firm Concord and became President Vladimir Putin’s “favorite chef,” and who also reportedly founded a company to hire “Internet trolls” to harass critics of the Russian regime, was targeting Fontanka correspondent Denis Korotkov and other reporters. 

Korotkov found that Prigozhin was linked to Dmitry Utkin — known by his nom de guerre “Wagner” — the commander of the private military company by the same name — as well as other security officers of Wagner. 

The connection between Wagner and Prigozhin’s security people came to light when the FSB detained Prigozhin’s motorcade for illegal use of special signals and license plates. A video of the incident showed Yevgeny Gulyayev, head of Prigozhin’s security. Fontanka has information linking Gulyayev’s former fellow servicemen — now employees of Prigozhin’s firm Concord — to Wagner and fighters in Ukraine and Syria.

Gulyaev began his career in the Leningrad police in the late 1980s, then served in the anti-organized crime department in St. Petersburg, as the city was re-named, then was promoted to serve as chief of police for the whole Northwest Federal District. He had attained the rank of colonel in the police.

Sources told Fontanka that Gulyayev ran a network of former police who frequently traveled to Rostov — the staging area for the war in Ukraine — and then later Krasnodar. Among people seen to travel with these retired colleagues of Gulyayev’s travel was Dmitry Utkin, commander of Wagner, 54, an Afghan war vet and also a retired policeman who distinguished himself in fighting in the North Caucasus. He retired from the police in 2014 and went to work for Prigozhin. 

Sources told Fontanka that Prigozhin’s travel routes often coincided with Utkin’s and they had sat next to each other on plane trips; Gulyayev was also seen traveling with Utkin. Gulyayev refused to comment to Fontanka.

Now it appears that in addition to performing the Kremlin’s dirty work in wars in Ukraine and Syria, the private contractors are also methodically harassing critics of the government who have also exposed their role. 

Within three hours of the appearance of Korotkov’s story, queries appeared on social media asking Fontanka journalists for Korotkov’s personal data. One message on VKontakte signed with the name “Kriv Vetka” and using a picture of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first Soviet secret police chief, as an avatar, asked for Korotkov’s birthday, saying that they wanted to surprise him. The publication could also account for recent DDoS attacks on Fontanka.ru, say the editors.  

“Kriv Vetka” wrote from an IP address that was registered with the company Glavset’, a new legal entity created by the managers of the infamous “troll factory” at no. 55 Savushkina Street, along with Internet Research, Prigozhin’s firm employing hundreds of Russians to write comments on Internet forums and news sites.

Glavset is headed by Mikhail Bystrov, the former head of the Moscow District Directorate of the Interior Ministry, or police. Bystrov had also headed Internet Research for a time.

Fontanka’s editors pursued their investigation into the attacks because they were concerned about a growing tide of online and offline harassment of reporters, bloggers and activists in St. Petersburg who are critical of authorities.

Also under attack are journalists from the Agency for Journalist Investigation, Andrei Konstantinov, Yevgeny Vyshenkov and Aleksandr Gorshkov. Fontanka discovered that the reporters were being tailed, including with a radar device placed under Vyshenkov’s car. Novaya Gazeta also did their own investigation of the surveillance of journalists by private companies with government contracts. Both concluded that the surveillance was not done by the FSB, but by private companies with ties to the government.

The journalists and activists found their private data posted on a site called Whoiswhos.me which was later blocked by the Russian government’s censor. Novaya Gazeta also found that Prigozhin had financed NTV’s takedown of the opposition, “Anatomy of Protest,” and was behind several fake sites purporting to be based in Ukraine which were actually Russian propaganda sites.

Daniil Aleksandrov, an activst in the movement “Monitoring St. Petersburg,” was beaten near his home. Not long before this incident, unknown persons had put up a fake account in VKontakte with his name, using a picture taken of him clandestinely while he was walking his dog. The account published statements derogatory of Russia.

Two other activists, whose first names only were given as “Ruslan” and “Yuliya,” were said to have fake accounts with pictures of their spouses, posted in this manner to defame them, and their cars were set on fire.

Another activist, Yegor Alekseyev, the administrator of a social media group called Prestupnaya Vlast‘ [Criminal Government], was also beaten by unknown assailants and suffered a broken nose and concussion; the attackers warmed him about “excessive opposition activity.”

A total of 7 persons have been beaten in St. Petersburg for reasons related to their writing or activism, says Fontanka. Some of their names were in the Whoiswhos.me portal, but now that the site is closed, it is not possible to determine if all of them were. The portal was created in late November 2015. While the real site owner is concealed, Fontanka found that it belonged to Whois Privacy Corp and the hosting was provided by the Kharkov company ITL, which also managed the site frolnews.ru, an anti-Ukrainian Russian language news site that ran a fake montage of President Petro Poroshenko in a military uniform with a swastika.

Fontanka also cites the work of British journalist Lawrence Alexander on the “troll factory” who discovered that the “troll factory” Ukraine sites all had the same Google Analytics ID. He also noted that the contact name — Nikita Podgorny — for registration was the same.

From here, the connections are a bit more tenuous but seem damning. Among the sites found by Alexander related to the “troll factory” was the Kharkov News Agency (NAKh) and Whoiswho.com.ua. The latter site was blocked by Ukrainian authorities and moved to zonu.org although it retained the same contact address. Says Fontanka (translation by The Interpreter):

Korotkov has written frequently on the network of Prigozhin’s business interests since 2014, a multi-million empire with contracts from the Defense Ministry which included housing for the military and service of military barracks run by former policemen.

The climate for Prigozhin’s successful contracts was set by former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyuk who created Oboronservis, a commercial organization to perform services for the military. After Serdyuk’s arrest, Sergei Shoigu, the new defense minister, joined various separately-created companies into one called GU ZhKKh [Main Directorate for Housing and Communal Services] which handled 40 billion rubles ($625 billion) in contracts — where once again Prigozhin was found.

Fontanka has asked police to investigate the attacks on their reporters and web site, and believe that if the police were honest enough to probe the queries for the private data of some of the people attacked — which likely came from police databases — they will find the culprit. Needless to say, this isn’t likely to happen.

Catherine A. Fitzpatrick