As we have reported, the "Troll Farm" at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg has been exposed by Russian journalists and former employees as paying people to troll Internet sites with pro-government comments and also to run several fake sites and blogs attempting to influence public opinion.
In 2014, Olga, a woman whose first name only is given, came to work at Internet Research, the formal name of the company owned by Dmitry Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman and caterer to President Vladimir Putin himself.
She worked for one year, then became pregnant, but when she went to Human Resources to obtain maternity leave, she was told that she wasn't formally employed, and there was a line for that status, and as such, was denied the leave.
Olga was also asked to take a lie detector test but she refused, citing her pregnancy, which was at an advanced stage. Management then told her to get a letter from her doctor.
She then decided to sue Internet Research, and to prove her relationship with the company, she photographed her IP address on the monitor of her work computer. The number -- 109.167.231.85 is the very same that Fontanka.ru had discovered was the site from which changes were made to the site whoiswhos.me which had outed the personal data of various opposition people, who then later became the victims of beatings.
Meanwhile, even after she filed the suit, Olga remained employed, but then left in late February 2015. She lost her last month's pay because she was told she would only receive it in exchange for a formal letter of resignation, which would then remove her ability to continue the lawsuit, according to her lawyers. After she refused, she literally had to run out of the building, as administrators tried to force her to sign the paper. Her husband then got a phone call from one of the managers who made veiled but clear threats.
Although she was forced to turn to doctors from the stress, eventually Olga gave birth successfully and continued her suit. She is demanding documentation of her employment, 300,000 rubles ($4,707) for maternity leave and childcare and an additional 50,000 rubles for mental suffering ($784).
Troll factory linked to beating of opposition politicians and journalists
Police denied that there was any systematic plan to attack opposition members, or that it was organized by Prigorzhin,
Fontanka.ru reported. They confirmed that the site whoiswhos.me was registered outside of the Russian Federation but refused to acknowledge the fact that this site had published the addresses and other personal data of the victims of the attacks.
But as Fontanka.ru reported, on February 11 Danil Aleksandrov, an activist from St. Petersburg Observers, was attacked near his home, as was Aleksandr Markov, a participant in on online anti-corruption group called Prestupnaya Vlast' [Criminal Government] on March 31. On April 7, Ruslan Starostin, another St. Petersburg Observers' activist found his car had been set on fire, but police refused to open up a case. On April 25, Yuliya Chernobrodova, another member of the Observers received murder threats, as did her husband. The police opened a case this time. On May 31, Yuliya also found her car burned, and this case was linked to the first.
On July 9, Yegor Alekseyev, the administrator of the VKontakte group for Prestupnaya Vlast was beaten. Police are still investigating.
As Fontanka reported, also under attack were journalists from the Agency for Journalist Investigation, Andrei Konstantinov, Yevgeny Vyshenkov and Aleksandr Gorshkov. Fontanka discovered that the reporters were being tailed, including with a radar device placed under Vyshenkov's car
Whoiswhos.me was created in late November 2015 by a Kharkhiv IT company. Critics of the Russian government found their personal data was published there, even with scans of their passports, unpublished photos and tax ID umbers.
As British journalist Lawrence Alexander discovered a site with a similar name was found to be part of Prigozhin's media empire: whoiswho.com.ua. The site was later blocked by Ukrainian authorities and then moved. Interestingly, at the same time as the appearance of the Whoiswhos.me portal, a site with the name frolnews.ru was registered by the same Kharkiv IT company, which reported on Ukraine from pro-Russian positions.
Fontanka said that the two sites weren't just similar; they were "prepared in the same kitchen by the same people." To be sure, the administrators used proxies in order to disguise their association with the site. But cyber security experts nonetheless found that some changes to the "whoiswho.com.ua" site had been made from the IP address 109.167.231.85.
This address was registered at the Corinthian Hotel but has no relationship to it. Instead, it was tied to a building nearby rented by the company Glavset'. Glavset', Ltd was registered by Mikhail Bystrov, former head of the Moscow District Interior Ministry, described by Fontanka as the "latest reincarnation of 'Internet Rsearch." In fact, Bystrov was even head of Internet Research for a time. The new company was shown by hackers from Anonymous International to be financed and managed from Prigozhin's corporation Concord.
Maksim Reznik, a local legislator, made a formal inquiry to police about the Fontanka's findings but was told there was no connection between the beatings and the site. During the investigation, the police found IP addresses and mobile phone numbers used to register fake pages in VKontakte, and even used to make threats against opposition members, but said they could take it no further, as disposable SIM cards registered to non-existent people were used.
-- Catherine A. Fitzpatrick