The Kremlin on Monday said it wasn't interested in the findings of an investigation charting the criminal enrichment of the family of one of the country's top officials.
The investigation, published last week by an anti-corruption group founded by opposition politician Alexei Navalny, detailed the apparent protection given by prosecutors to the sons of Russia's current Prosecutor General, Yury Chaika, as they accumulated businesses and real estate worth millions of dollars through alleged fraud and links with organized crime.
Since its publication on Dec. 1, a Russian-language video version of the investigation has been viewed 2.5 million times, but the Kremlin had declined to comment.
However, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday told reporters that Kremlin officials had seen the information this summer, and had not batted an eyelid.
“The information didn't provoke any interest because it doesn't concern the prosecutor general,” Peskov said. “It talks only about his grown-up sons, who are doing business absolutely independently,” Peskov said, the Interfax news agency reported.
Yury Chaika himself responded to the investigation into his sons Artyom and Igor last week, saying it was “commissioned” to discredit him and “deliberately deceitful.”
