The United States has charged “Putin’s chef” and 12 other Russians with election interference

The Justice Department has indicted a well-known Russian troll firm, naming more than a dozen separate suspects, including Yevgeny Prigozhin (“Putin’s cook”), a close associate of the Russian president, writes The Washington Post.

Prigogine organized the so-called troll factory, on the basis of which they created a whole media holding called the Internet Research Agency. It was pointed out by the defendant in the indictment US Department of Justice.

In addition, two companies of Prigogine from the Concord group were on the list of the US Department of Justice.

“From or during the period from 2014 to the present, the defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the grand jury) to defraud the United States by disrupting and obstructing the lawful function of the government through fraud and deception in order to interfere with political and electoral processes of the United States, including the 2016 presidential election,” the indictment states.

He is also blamed on the head of the foreign department of the troll factory, Jeyhun Aslanov (J-Z).

Prosecutors believe that some of the defendants posed as Americans and talked to the unsuspecting staff of Trump's headquarters. They also allegedly created fake online profiles in social networks, writes Reuters.

The report says the suspects "had a strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system, including the 2016 presidential election."

Suspects organized political rallies and paid for political advertising time. They also used social security numbers and birth dates for real US citizens to open accounts in the payment system. PayPal and getting fake driver's license.

The special counsel's office said they were all charged with fraud, three were also charged with conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud, and five were charged with aggravated identity theft.

In turn, the former employee of Internet Research LLC Lyudmila Savchuk said that 13 people are just the beginning.

“Every employee of a troll factory should be on the list, even if it’s just a 20-year-old Facebook commentator. The list should contain not 13, but 2013, 3013 names, and even more. The list should include not only trolls, but also members of the media, and not only Prigozhin’s fake media, but also all Russian propaganda media that work hand in hand with the Kremlinbots, all over the world. Any system administrator who entered the building at 55 Savushkina or any other building and helped set up work to interfere in the American elections or influence the lives of Russians should be named,” Savchuk wrote on Facebook.

After the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election in November 2016, the scandal associated with the conclusions of the special services that Russia intervened in the elections in order to increase Trump's chances of victory, undermining the position of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, continues in the US.

Investigators of the Senate earlier accused Moscow of trying to undermine democratic processes through the dissemination of malicious false information, threats to the energy security of countries and the use of “cybercriminals” to steal data.

Moscow denies these accusations, and Trump explains the attacks on his envy. Press Secretary of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin Dmitry Peskov on Friday evening reported Riderthat has not yet read the text of the report.

Prigogine became a multimillionaire after one day in 2001, he served Putin in his restaurant and liked him, writes LB. Over the 15 years after that, an ordinary restaurateur has gone from organizing status lunches to serving Putin’s inauguration ceremony and multi-billion dollar contracts for food for EMERCOM employees, Moscow schoolchildren and the military.

Companies associated with Prigogine over the last 5 years in Russia have received government contracts worth over 200 billion rubles (over 3 billion dollars).

Read also on ForumDaily:

Washington Post told how the Russian "factory of trolls" covered the annexation of the Crimea

Facebook users must now prove that they are not Russian bots

In Congress, showed examples of Russian propaganda through Facebook

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