On the Morals in a Useless "Elite Club”
The head of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC), member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation Sergei Grebennikov has been charged with treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code). The Lefortovo District Court of Moscow granted the investigation's motion to arrest the manager. This is already the second criminal case against Grebennikov. On May 22, he received seven years in prison for illegal drug trafficking (Part 3 of Article 228 of the Criminal Code). The head of RAEC has been in pretrial detention since January 25. As follows from Grebennikov's testimony in the drug case, he had been using mephedrone for a long time, which he treated his acquaintances to, "due to stable and well-established criminal connections with drug dealers, he is aware of the forms and methods of law enforcement agencies and may be involved in a number of similar crimes." During the search, his US green card was confiscated. It was also established that Grebennikov owns an apartment in Germany. In the treason case, he faces up to life imprisonment. Grebennikov has worked at RAEC since 2010. He was deputy director of the association of Sergei Plugotarenko (the latter was elected general director of the ANO Digital Economy on September 30, 2022). Representatives of RAEC member companies elected Grebennikov director of the association on December 12, 2022. RAEC was founded in 2006, it unites more than 150 players in the electronic communications market. From 2015 to 2021, Grebennikov was a member of the board, chairman of the council of the Institute for Internet Development (IRI). RAEC is a co-founder of IRI, which in turn is considered the main and generous distributor of money spent on propaganda. The IRI is headed by Alexey Goreslavsky, a former pro-Kremlin media manager and participant in the dispersal of the Lenta.ru editorial office in 2014.
Grebennikov is also the author of the all-Russian campaign "Digital Dictation", which has been held since 2019.
The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and Rucriminal.info managed to find out interesting facts about the ANO "Digital Economy", which is headed by Sergey Aleksandrovich Plugotarenko.
This person came from the RAEC structure at the invitation of Dmitry Nikolaevich Chernyshenko (Deputy Prime Minister) and removed the previous general director, Evgeny Kovnir, from this position.
ANO Digital Economy is a non-profit structure that lives off founding contributions. At the moment, the contribution is 12.5 million rubles per year, the number of founders is 36 of the largest companies, such as VTB, Yandex, MTS, Megafon, Gazprombank, etc. Initially, this organization was created by the current Minister of Defense - Belousov Andrey Removich, he also pulled in the largest players in the digital market. This period was considered the heyday of the organization, the largest companies dreamed of getting into such a close circle with the Deputy Prime Minister. For example, the General Director of JSC Er-Telecom Holding - Kuzyaev Andrey Ravelevich personally wrote a letter to Putin with a request to petition for his inclusion in this "elite club". However, he achieved his goal, at the moment the company is a founder, but for three years it has not paid the founding fee, despite invoices from ANO and requests for payment. With the arrival of Chernyshenko to the position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board of ANO CE, the structure became worse and worse, but, nevertheless, it somehow developed, Chernyshenko was interested in the topic of digitalization. According to a source of the VChK-OGPU, now that Grigorenko (Deputy Chairman of the Government) became the chairman of ANO, the structure came to a standstill. Grigorenko is not interested in this organization, as a result, ANO became of no use to anyone. At first, he flatly refused to deal with ANO, but later he began to sometimes hold meetings with big business on the ANO CE platform, but all business requests following the meetings do not go beyond talk.
Let's return to our hero. One thing from Sergei's past is known for sure: he was close friends with his colleague - Sergei Vladimirovich Grebennikov, who after Plugotarenko left took his place in RAEC - became the general director of the organization. They even had one page on social networks for both of them.
It should be noted that not long ago Grebennikov was imprisoned for seven years for drug trafficking. But, from the very beginning, it was clear that there was something more behind this arrest than just drugs, since the security forces came to his home with a search and found an unfortunate 2 grams of mephedrone. At the moment, the situation has changed, Grebennikov is facing a new charge - treason.
On the day when all the media were trumpeting about it, Plugotarenko was clearly on edge and nervous, even during the birthday greetings of an employee of the organization, he mentioned this news, saying, "today would have been a great winter day if it had not been overshadowed by such terrible news."
Plugotarenko, having come to the structure of ANO Digital Economy, pushed through many of his people from RAEC, who are absolutely incompetent.
ANO Digital Economy jokes that the economy may be digital, but at internal meetings you have to vote the old-fashioned way - raising their hands. In addition, most of the heads of the founding companies are not happy with the policy that Sergey is pursuing, they say that now ANO CE has become just the same RAEC = a useless structure.
As the source of the VChK-OGPU notes, Plugotarenko has now made friends with one of the directors of the department - Dmitry Zakharchenko (also came from the RAEC structure). Dmitry is a big fan of South Korea and at the beginning of this year Plugotarenko actively posted photos from there to his TG channel.
At the end of last year (in November), the company convened another Supervisory Board with Dmitry Nikolaevich Chernyshenko as chairman. This event was postponed 3 times, the last time it was postponed to February and a couple of hours before the start of the meeting was canceled. The postponement of the meetings was due to the fact that Chernyshenko was planning to remove Plugotarenko, who was undesirable to him, and put his employee from the secretariat in this position. But during the transfer, Plugotarenko (read as his employees) fussed and held internal meetings of founders, where he frantically made changes to the organization's charter, just to cover himself and not lose the status of CEO. Of course, you don't want to leave such a well-paid position.
Corruption is clearly thriving in the structure. So, to organize participation in the annual CIPR event in 2025, the company "held a competition" of commercial proposals for the construction and design of a stand for 10 million and "completely unexpectedly" the winner was a company called ArtStyleGroup LLC, the founder of which is an employee of ANO - Mark Mikhailovich Tverdynin, director of the organizational and legal department and concurrently Plugotarenko's right hand. Sergei does not go anywhere without Mark, Tverdynin is always present at any internal meeting, at any event, even at a meeting that involves a tete-a-tete. By the way, Mark himself is a terribly greedy person, he saves on everything, from coffee for employees, payment for corporate taxis, to bonus payments, which are always promised only in words. One such example was not so long ago. At the Supervisory Board in April 2025, bonuses for employees were included in the expense estimate, the estimate was approved, and to the question "where is the bonus, Mark?", the answer was "we have a deficit estimate, we cannot pay the bonus." At the same time, the following questions were voiced for voting at the same Supervisory Board: 1 - payment of a bonus to the General Director of the Organization, where everyone voted "for" and Plugotarenko received a bonus. Question 2 - an increase in the salary of the CEO, as well as providing him with a personal car, a driver, as well as compensation for gasoline.
Yuri Prokov
Source: www.rucriminal.info
