The tycoon behind Russia's ‘troll factory’ just trolled journalists tracking his catering empire, hard

Evgeny Prigozhin, the supposed mastermind behind St. Petersburg’s infamous “troll factory” and a Russian mercenary group called “Wagner,” has decided to troll Russian journalists, according to the website Fontanka, which has reported extensively on Prigozhin’s various holdings.

On November 15, the magazine RBC revealed that a man named Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin, the supposed commander of the “Wagner” private military company, has been made the general director of “Concord Management and Consulting LLC,” the holding company for Prigozhin’s catering empire.

According to Fontanka reporter Denis Korotkov, the personal tax number for Concord’s new CEO doesn’t match the tax number for Wagner’s Uktin, meaning that Concord most likely had someone change his name to “Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin” and appointed him CEO, just to screw with reporters tracking the company’s records. “Prigozhin has displayed billionaire trolling,” Fontanka concluded.

The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned both the “Wagner” PMC and Dmitry Utkin for the mercenary group’s alleged involvement in eastern Ukraine.