Russia Detains Investigative Reporter on Drugs Charges

(Bloomberg) -- A prominent journalist who investigated corruption in Russia has been detained on drug trafficking charges that he denies.

Ivan Golunov, 36, was stopped and searched by police in Moscow on Thursday as he was going to meet with another journalist, the independent Meduza news website said in a statement. Police “supposedly found illegal drugs on his person and in his home, and detectives have claimed there was an ‘intent to distribute,’” Meduza’s Chief Executive Officer Galina Timchenko and Editor-in-Chief Ivan Kolpakov said in the statement Friday.

The Moscow police said Friday that several photographs included in their initial statement, which appeared to depict a large drug laboratory, were not from the alleged crime scene. Narcotics were found at Golunov’s apartment and he is under investigation for large-scale drug dealing, the statement said. That carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years.

“The extremely strange behavior of the police suggests that Ivan Golunov has been arrested on a trumped-up charge,” Johann Bihr, the head of Reporters Without Borders’ Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said in a statement. “If fabricated evidence really has been used to arrest a journalist who is so well-known throughout Russia, this would mark a significant escalation in the harassment of the country’s independent media.”

Golunov, who conducted investigations into corruption in Moscow city hall and schemes allegedly used by bureaucrats to enrich themselves, has denied possessing the drugs, according to Latvia-registered Meduza. He said he was beaten while in custody and prevented from contacting a lawyer, while a friend was only told of his whereabouts after he’d been held for 14 hours, it said.

When a lawyer was granted access, police refused Golunov’s request to take samples from his hands for forensic analysis to determine whether he’d ever been in contact with the substance he was alleged to possess, the website reported.

“We have reason to believe he’s been targeted because of his work as a journalist,” Timchenko and Kolpakov wrote, adding that Golunov had been the target of threats in recent months. “We will defend our journalist by all available means.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Stepan Kravchenko in Moscow at skravchenko@bloomberg.net;Jake Rudnitsky in Moscow at jrudnitsky@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin, Torrey Clark

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