A court in Moscow on Wednesday ordered the arrest in absentia of London restaurateur Yevgeny Chichvarkin on charges of spreading “fake news” about the war in Ukraine and evading “foreign agent” obligations.
State prosecutors said in March that they would seek criminal charges against Chichvarkin for continuing to issue public statements without indicating that Russia’s Justice Ministry labeled him a “foreign agent” in June 2022.
Russian police issued an arrest warrant for Chichvarkin, who owns the Michelin-starred restaurant Hide in London, on unspecified charges in July.
Moscow’s Dorogomilovsky District Court ruled to place Chichvarkin in pre-trial detention for two months on both the “foreign agent” and “war fakes” charges, according to the municipal court system’s Telegram channel. It said the pre-trial detention would begin once Chichvarkin is extradited to or detained in Russia.
The nature of the “war fakes” charges was not made public.
Chichvarkin is a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.
He was one of the founders of the mobile phone retailer Yevroset in the late 1990s and grew it into a major brand. Chichvarkin fled to Britain in 2008, saying he feared for his life if jailed in Russia, where he faced extortion and kidnapping charges he claimed were politically motivated.
Those charges were dropped in 2011.
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