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Russian geological company executive loses job after ‘Twitch’ footage shows him bragging about sex with subordinates

Source: Meduza

Ruslan Gorring is no longer a deputy director at the Russian state geological company Rosgeo, following the publication of scandalous online footage. Earlier this week, the Telegram channel Mediakiller shared a montage of Gorring’s outbursts on the live streaming video platform Twitch, where he threatened real-world violence against fellow PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds players. In another clip, Gorring speaks to a young woman who apparently works at Rosgeo whom he once fired for ordering him business-class — not first-class — plane tickets.

In the video, Gorring bullies the woman into recalling how he rehired her to work at a Rosgeo subsidiary to serve as his mole in the staff. He then brags about sleeping with four coworkers at the company, calling them “kitties” and “princesses,” while insisting that his female employees spend their time discussing his sexual conquests. At the end of the video, Gorring says he has a meeting scheduled soon with his boss (presumably Rosgeo head Roman Panov) and the billionaire Leonid Mikhelson.

It's unknown who compiled this footage and shared it online. Gorring's apparent Twitch account is no longer active.

Following Mediakiller’s Telegram post, the website Daily Storm published a long report on Gorring, claiming that records unearthed by the “SPARK” business-analytics system suggest that he was born Ruslan Ganizhev. Daily Storm highlights a report in 2011 that Ganizhev was arrested while handling a bribe for a Moscow regional official. He apparently changed his name a year later.

Daily Storm also spoke to Gorring’s ex-wife, Hedi Sagova, who says her husband believed he was being monitored and targeted in an apparent defamation campaign that included rumors that he married an African woman to win the favor of her diamond-mine-owning father.

On January 29, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Dmitry Kobylkin announced that he has fired Gorring and reprimanded Gorring’s supervisor, Rosgeo head Roman Panov. Ministry officials also say they aren’t ruling out a formal inquiry into Rosgeo’s top management.

Rosgeo later told reporters that Panov personally terminated the company's contract with Gorring, stating that Kobylkin doesn't have the authority to fire or reprimand its staff. Rosgeo simultaneously argued that it found “no labor violations” in Gorring's behavior or evidence of sexual misconduct or abuse of authority. On January 29, the company's website repeatedly crashed, which spokespeople attributed to a cyberattack.

Gorring told the website RBC that he resigned, defending his antics on Twitch as “personal talk with friends during [his] private time.” Gorring also claimed that the edited footage was released as part of a coordination campaign against him, arguing that “someone” didn't like his “aggressive actions in the company's interests.”

At Rosgeo, Gorring supervised the company's “development and commercial activity” department. According to his (already deleted) biography on Rosgeo's website, he was born in 1978, served in the army from 2000 until 2011, and then “held senior positions in foreign mining companies and investment funds.”