Prigozhin wasn’t admitting anything the Justice Department didn’t already know. Special counsel Robert Mueller had detailed his efforts to meddle in the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election meddling. In 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Prigozhin for engaging in “information warfare against the US” and he was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list, with a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. US officials were also issued a “red alert” by Interpol, asking members of the international police organization to arrest him if he came into their jurisdiction. In 2020, Interpol quietly withdrew the alert. The only announcement of the move came from one of Prigozhin’s companies, though with no explanation as to why it happened. Interpol and the Department of Justice remained silent. But now a leaked Interpol document reviewed by The Intercept reveals that the agency’s watchdog found that the red notice requested by the US was “predominantly political in nature” — and violated Interpol’s principle of political neutrality. The emergence of the Interpol document – and Prigozhin’s admission of election meddling, which he reiterated in even stronger words in a statement to The Intercept – is likely to prove controversial. Mueller’s investigation continues to be a lightning rod in US politics, with former President Donald Trump still insisting it was a “witch hunt” aimed at unfairly linking him to Russian meddling in the election he won over Hillary Clinton. Interpol’s determination that the red alert request was politically motivated can be seen as bolstering the claims of the former president and his supporters. But Prigozhin’s admission that he did seek to interfere in the US election is also likely to renew questions about Interpol at a time when the agency already faces intense criticism that it is vulnerable to political exploitation. The document reviewed by The Intercept is a partially redacted 12-page decision by the Commission for the Scrutiny of Interpol Records, an independent body that hears appeals against Interpol communications. It is marked “not for public distribution” and includes “limited” notes where material has been edited. The CCF document was found in the correspondence of a Russian law firm representing Prigozhin, Capital Legal Services or CLS. Earlier this year, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hackers targeted more than 50 Russian companies and government agencies. at least 360,000 emails were compromised by CLS. In total, more than 13 terabytes of Russian documents were provided to Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency collective that has posted the raw documents on its website. The Intercept and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project formed a consortium of news organizations to investigate the documents. Interpol, CCF and Prigozhin did not dispute the document’s authenticity, and The Intercept found no digital evidence that it had been tampered with. The document appears to have been redacted by the committee before it was shared with Prigozhin’s legal team. Wanted notice issued by the FBI for Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Photo: FBI

USA vs. Prigozhin

In addition to his alleged role in election interference, Prigozhin has long been known as the founder of the Wagner Group, a notorious mercenary group that does the Kremlin’s bidding in half a dozen conflicts around the world. He was initially linked to Putin’s orbit through his catering business, which is why the Western media dubbed him “Putin’s chef”. Prigozhin’s global and domestic profile rose significantly after his mercenaries were involved in conflicts in Syria and several African countries, as well as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this year. Prigozhin is currently under sanctions in both the US and Europe for his alleged election meddling and the actions of his mercenaries in Libya and Ukraine.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ For years, Prigozhin denied any involvement with Wagner, but recently embraced his role as the group’s founder after he began playing an increasingly public and prominent role in Ukraine. In an investigation published last month, The Intercept exposed the lengths to which Prigozhin disputed earlier reports linking him to Wagner, drawing on a network of lawyers from the US and Europe in an attempt to challenge his deteriorating reputation as world warlord. The US case against Prigozhin was one of the high-profile prosecutions to emerge from Mueller’s two-year investigation. Prigozhin was charged along with 12 other people. two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering. and a troll factory he funded, the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency. At a press conference announcing the charges, which included “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein accused Prigozhin and his co-defendants of seeking to spread “distrust of the candidates and the political system at large.” The case proceeded slowly, with only the two Concord entities appearing in court through their US lawyers. For two years the process has been marred by judicial reprimands, leaked documents shared in discovery and growing concern from U.S. prosecutors that Concord’s team was exploiting the discovery process to obtain sensitive national security information, even though there was no real prospect that the company Leadership would be held accountable in the US Prosecutors eventually dropped the case against Concord Management and Concord Catering in March 2020, weeks before it was supposed to go to trial. “The calculus of whether substantial federal interests are served by this prosecution … has changed since the indictment was returned,” Justice Department officials wrote in court filings. However, the indictments against the Internet Research Service and Prigozhin himself remained in place, as did the Interpol red notice. Prigozhin’s lawyers had filed a complaint against the red notice in late 2019, arguing, among other things, that the legal proceedings in the US were political in nature. According to the CLS emails, lawyers representing Prigozhin followed up with Interpol days before the US suddenly dropped charges against the two Concord companies. Prigozhin’s lawyers told Interpol they were sending a “memorandum with recent developments and other relevant information for further consideration by the Commission”. It is unclear whether the withdrawal of charges against the two Prigozhin companies had an impact on Interpol’s review of the red notice. Because the document is partially redacted, the full scope of the CCF’s consultation remains unknown. The document notes that the US National Central Bureau, or USNCB — the representative US body at Interpol — responded to the commission’s requests for information as it investigated the case. The USNCB, according to the document, confirmed that “the United States remains interested in seeking the extradition of the applicant on the charge if he is apprehended in a country from which his extradition is legally possible.” Comments from the National Central Office of Russia have been corrected. The document also says the CCF has sought input from Interpol’s General Secretariat as part of its review — a somewhat unusual step, according to Bruno Min, who has worked with political activists targeted by red notices and leads the Fair Trials campaign , a man for reforming Interpol. “It’s not in all cases that the General Secretariat is invited to make representations about a complaint, so this may indicate that this was a red notice that they wanted to defend,” Min said. The point of the CCF’s review was not to examine the underlying evidence in any criminal case, the document notes, but to ensure that red notices comply with Interpol guidelines. The CCF concluded that “there is an overriding political dimension to this case and that the information provided by the USNCB does not meet the requirements of Article 3 of the INTERPOL Statute.” The CCF’s decision appears to have hinged on the committee’s concern that the case against Prigozhin might be perceived as political — rather than a definitive decision that it was. Keeping the red notice in place, the CCF concluded, “would have significant adverse effects on the neutrality” of Interpol. Keeping the red notice in place, the CCF concluded, “would have significant negative consequences for the neutrality” of Interpol, causing the agency “to be perceived as siding with one country against another or facilitating politically motivated activities.” The conclusion is not a determination that “US charges should not be upheld in national judicial proceedings or that they are not lawful,” the CCF adds, but that the red alert does not meet Interpol’s “legal requirements.” The wording of the CCF is important, Min noted.