Aleksey Blinovsky, husband of blogger Elena Blinovskaya, has been charged with complicity in tax evasion, reported Main Investigative Department of the TFR in Moscow.
He was charged on May 15 under Part 5 of Art. 33, part 2 of Art. 198 of the Penal Code, as well as paragraph “b” part 4 of Art. 174.1 of the Criminal Code (assistance in tax evasion on a particularly large scale, as well as money laundering on a particularly large scale). In the near future, the investigation plans to apply to the court for the selection of a coercive measure for him.
The Moscow Main Investigative Directorate of the TFR believes that Elena Blinovskaya implicated her husband and “unidentified persons” as accomplices when she understated earnings by “splitting” the business. “Blinovsky and other unidentified people <…> have attracted controlled individual entrepreneurs (affiliates) and legal entities that apply special tax regimes for <…> the deliberate “splitting” of activities in order to underestimate revenues by distributing them to interdependent (controlled) entities,” they say in the commission of inquiry.
At the end of April, the court placed Blinovskaya under house arrest for large-scale tax evasion (part 2 of article 198 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and large-scale money laundering (clause “b” of 4° of Article 174.1 of the RF Penal Code) She faces up to three years in prison on the first charge and up to seven years on the second.
According to the UK, Blinovskaya divided the business and understated the income, which is why in 2019-2021 she did not pay taxes totaling more than 918 million rubles. The UK claimed that during questioning she repented and fully admitted her guilt. In early May, the court stopped accounts of Blinovskaya and her husband in several banks.
During her interrogation, the blogger claimed that she was ready to pay the tax debt in full. His lawyer during the hearing on the choice of a preventive measure declared that she had already “voluntarily transferred a significant sum to the budget”. However, on May 14, the head of the investigative commission, Alexander Bastrykin, said that Blinovskaya had repaid only a “small part” of her debt – 10 million rubles out of almost 919 million.
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