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Interpol ends prosecution of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Concord company

Interpol ended this prosecution starting from August 28

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. Interpol stopped prosecuting the Concord Management and Consulting company, headed by Russian entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigozhin since August 28, 2020, Concord’s press service reported at the company’s page in VKontakte social network on Monday.

"After the victory in the US court, Concord Management and Consulting and Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin appealed to Interpol demanding to end their international prosecution. Today we received the documents that Interpol ended this prosecution starting from August 28," the company said.

Charges against Prigozhin's companies

In February 2018, the US Department of Justice accused Prigozhin and employees of the Russian Internet Research Agency of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. According to the American side, Prigozhin's companies, including Concord Management and Consulting, were financed by the Internet Research Agency.

However, on March 16, 2020, a federal court in Washington upheld the prosecutor's request to terminate the process. She asked to close the case, as she came to the conclusion that "further proceedings <...> serve neither the interests of justice, nor the interests of national security", since Concorde does not have a presence in the United States and "cannot be effectively punished if conviction ". At the same time, the prosecutor's office emphasized that it intends to continue efforts with the aim of "taking into custody the individual defendants and making them appear before this court on existing charges."

After that Prigozin demanded imitating a criminal case against ex-US President Barack Obama, as well as a number of American congressmen, senators and officials due to the illegal prosecution of him and his companies. Prigozhin's letter to US Attorney General William Barr was published by the Concord press service.

The Russian authorities repeatedly rejected claims of attempts to influence the course of the US elections. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Washington would not achieve anything from Moscow by using sanctions pressure, except for a further deterioration in relations between the two countries.