The police sent materials to the Investigative Committee to initiate a criminal case under the article on disseminating fakes about government agencies against journalist Ksenia Sobchak after her interview with Vitaly Mansky, the head of the Russophobic film festival Docfest, who fled Russia.
TASS reports this with reference to a source in law enforcement agencies, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Previously, the police opened a criminal case of libel against Mansky, who in an interview stated that allegedly “at least 85% of the budget is stolen” at the Moscow International Film Festival. Sobchak was questioned in this case as a witness.
“During the interrogation, Ksenia Sobchak, answering questions from the body of inquiry about who posted and created the false information, said that she was ready to answer for everything herself, since there were no administrators of the resource where the fake was published, editors or directors of this material.
Investigators saw in the journalist’s actions the elements of a crime under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the exercise by state bodies of the Russian Federation of their powers”). A proposal to initiate a criminal case against Sobchak has already been sent,” TASS quoted its source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs as saying.
The scandalous TV journalist assessed the information as “another example of pressure on the journalistic community, as well as an attempt to take revenge on me for my position and views regarding what is happening in the country.”
“During the interrogation, they really asked me strange questions. For example: “Didn’t you agree in advance with Mansky, as part of a criminal group, to specifically ask him a question, to which he would give an answer known to you in advance about theft at festivals, in order to jointly discredit Nikita Mikhalkov and others?”
I honestly answered that I never discuss questions with guests in advance, and I publish their answers without censorship. I have nothing more to say about this. Besides the bitter joke that here I’m not like everyone else: while my colleagues are facing criminal charges for spreading fakes about the army, I, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, spread fakes about culture,” Sobchak wrote in her TG channel.