This man (we are looking for him and ask for your help in finding him) was waiting outside Sergei Mokhov’s apartment building entrance on Friday evening with a bouquet of flowers.
When Mokhov approached the door, the man jabbed a syringe containing an unknown liquid into his thigh and ran off. Mokhov, understandably, had no idea what was happening; he felt pain, thought he had been stabbed, and started examining his leg. A few seconds later he realized he was losing consciousness, managed to call his wife and ask her to call an ambulance, and then blacked out.
Sergei Mokhov’s wife is Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer for the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) and coordinator of the RosPil project, which fights corruption in government procurement.
Today, two days after the incident, having thought everything through, we believe this attack is connected to Sobol’s professional work and, above all, to her investigations into “Putin’s chef,” Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The owner of St. Petersburg’s “troll factories”, the Defense Ministry’s main contractor and one of the “kings of government procurement” — he makes money from everything, from school lunches to the construction of military housing compounds.
Sobol was the lead author of these investigations:
The first Sobol video, which launched the ACF’s series of publications: “Putin’s Chef Replaced Serdyukov and Vasilyeva”
Post about the ACF’s first case
The next case: 6 companies affiliated with Prigozhin entered into an illegal cartel arrangement in Defense Ministry tenders and, as a result, received 17 more government contracts worth a total of 16.2 billion rubles (about $270 million at the time) — Sobol’s post
The third case: 6 shell companies linked to one another and to “Putin’s restaurateur,” Yevgeny Prigozhin, received 6.4 billion rubles (about $107 million at the time) from the state budget for routine repairs at Defense Ministry facilities as a result of illegal collusion in tenders. We filed a complaint with the FSB — Sobol’s post
How Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) is deliberately stalling the Prigozhin case
Overview post, “Prigozhin’s Government Contracting Empire, with a chart of all the companies” — Sobol’s post
Video about the Prigozhin family’s assets
Sobol’s post about adding two more Prigozhin-controlled firms to the cartel case and expanding the case from 17 billion rubles to 23 billion rubles (about $383 million at the time)
Sobol is handling our current major case against Prigozhin’s companies at the FAS. She has filed a huge number of complaints against him. Lyuba’s work has most definitely cost him a great deal of money — he has to pay officials larger bribes to secure favorable outcomes in proceedings on those complaints.
Of course, we cannot state with 100% certainty that Prigozhin and his people were behind the attack. However, we do insist that this version should be investigated first.
Sergei Mokhov is an anthropologist. Recently he has been studying attitudes toward death in different cultures, ritual practices, etc. In the first hours after the attack, there was some thought that this might be a message from the “cemetery mafia,” but later both we and Mokhov himself concluded that his work in this area is too academic — it contains nothing about specific cases, groups, or corruption connected with the sale of burial plots, and so on.
By contrast, Sobol’s investigations are highly concrete and specific (see above).
(Perhaps most importantly) Attacks like this are Prigozhin’s trademark. In St. Petersburg, there have been several attacks on journalists who published material about him.
Reports have been published alleging that Prigozhin is connected to the financing of so-called private military companies. These operate as semi-legal groups serving the government. In other words, Prigozhin has regular access to people who make their living through violence and operate in a legal gray zone.
We see a clear unwillingness on the part of law enforcement agencies to investigate this case, despite the public attention it has received.
In this connection, we, the ACF, demand that the case be transferred to a level where a proper investigation can be ensured.
So that the possible involvement of Yevgeny Prigozhin and persons associated with him in the attack is examined as a top priority.
Today we are sending the relevant statements to the FSB, the Investigative Committee, and to Putin as head of state.
If you know anything about the attack, write to us via the secure dropbox.