‘Putin’s Chef’ Speaks for First Time in Mueller Probe Case

(Bloomberg) -- A close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin weighed in for the first time in a case brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, saying his company has “fully complied” with a U.S. Justice Department subpoena despite not providing many of the requested documents.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, nicknamed “Putin's chef” because he has been the Russian leader's caterer, said in a filing in federal court in Washington that his company, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, simply did not possess many of the requested records because they were either not required under Russian law or were purged due to document retention protocols.

Concord was the only one of the 13 Russian individuals and several entities to respond to criminal charges filed by Mueller in 2018 accusing them of interfering in the 2016 election. Concord pleaded not guilty. Prigozhin, its sole shareholder, was charged separately by Mueller but did not enter a plea.

Proscecutors, who accuse Concord of bankrolling a social media campaign designed to sway U.S. voters, asked that the company be held in contempt because it had not responded to a request for records including emails, calendar entries and payment records. The government says these may show Concord's ties to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which Mueller has charged as Russia's “troll farm.”

Concord is scheduled to go on trial in April.

No Backups

In his statement, which was translated from Russian, Prighozin said he only became involved with Concord after the election, acquiring his stake in the company in February 2017. He said Concord did not keep emails and other electronic records for longer than three months, owing to concerns about cyberattacks from the U.S. government and other parties. The company also kept neither cloud nor hard-copy backups, Prigozhin said.

Prigozhin claimed Concord was unable to find any records of payments to Internet Research Agency or other entities named by U.S. prosecutors. He also said the company had no access to employees' phones so had no records of their texts or calls.

Mueller's 2018 charges against the Russians laid out a story of how the Russians took advantage of social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter to pose as U.S. citizens exercising their rights to free expression during the 2016 campaign.

Concord retained a Washington lawyer, Eric Dubelier, to fight the case. Last Friday, Dubelier also argued the company had fully complied with the U.S. subpoena and called the government's contempt request a “cheap shot.”

The case is U.S. v. Concord Management and Consulting LLC, 18-cr-00032, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Farrell in New York at gregfarrell@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Anthony Lin

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.