US charges Russian Elena Khusyaynova with meddling in US elections, a US$35m scheme funded by ‘Putin’s cook’
- Khusyaynova is accused of being the chief accountant for Project Lakhta, a campaign of election interference paid for by pro-Putin oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin
- She is the first person charged with meddling in the 2018 vote, in a conspiracy that the US says ‘continues to this day’
A Russian national has been charged by the US for allegedly being one of the masterminds behind a conspiracy to interfere in both the 2016 and 2018 elections, marking the first charges related to meddling in next month’s congressional midterm vote.
The woman, identified as Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of St Petersburg, Russia, allegedly served as the chief accountant for an operation known as “Project Lakhta,” the Justice Department said on Friday in a statement. The department identified the operation as “a Russian umbrella effort funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, and Concord Catering.”
The charges come as top US law enforcement and intelligence agencies warn Americans about continuing efforts by Russia, China and other foreign actors to interfere in the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential elections.
The charges announced on Friday centred on a conspiracy that included the creation of thousands of social media and email accounts that appeared to be run by Americans as part of what the conspirators referred to as “information warfare against the United States.”
This effort was not only designed to spread distrust towards candidates for US political office and the US political system in general, but also to defraud the United States
Referring to Khusyaynova, the Justice Department said: “The financial documents she controlled include detailed expenses for activities in the United States, such as expenditures for activists, advertisements on social media platforms, registration of domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and promoting news postings on social network.”
