Company owned by oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin reportedly acquires the rights to action film ‘Tourist’
On June 3, the Russian Culture Ministry issued a rental license for the film “Tourist,” an action movie about Russian military instructors working in the Central African Republic.
In turn, Open Media reported that according to the rental certificate, the film rights were acquired by Aurum LLC — a company which, according to Russia’s Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is 100 percent owned by Kremlin-linked oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin. However, the information available on Culture Ministry’s website made no mention of Aurum LLC acquiring the rights to the film.
As previously reported by Meduza, the film “Tourist” owes it’s plot to the exploits of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner private military company (PMC), which is also associated with Prigozhin. What’s more, informed sources told Meduza that Prigozhin actually bankrolled the film to “whitewash” the Wagner PMC’s reputation. When our special correspondent Liliya Yapparova reached out to Prigozhin for a comment on the film, he responded by comparing her to Soviet-era “enemies of the people.”
Commenting on Prigozhin’s statements, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that as a Russian citizen, Prigozhin is entitled to his “own point of view” so long as “it doesn’t contradict the laws of the Russian Federation.”
