Russian restaurant chain asks prosecutors to investigate ‘Male State’ donors for financing extremism
The Russian restaurant chain “Tanuki” has requested that prosecutors in the Nizhny Novgorod Region investigate everyone who made donations to the far-right hate group “Male State” for financing extremism.
Tanuki’s marketing director Stanislav Koloskov told RBC on Wednesday, October 27, that the company filed the request earlier this week. “After Male State was recognized as an extremist organization, it’s logical that all the funding that goes to support the group, any posts, this all finances extremist activity. So we filed an application for a probe of the flow of finances, to block access to these payments,” he explained.
According to the Telegram channel Baza, Tanuki asked prosecutors to look into everyone who sent money to Male State’s founder, Vladislav Pozdnyakov. Pozdnyakov previously claimed that he no longer runs Male State.
The company also filed a lawsuit against Pozdnyakov with the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court, seeking compensation for losses incurred during Male State supporters’ pressure campaign against the restaurant chain in August. Tanuki estimated the damages at 158,000 rubles ($2,250).
Commenting on the lawsuit, Pozdnyakov wrote on Telegram that there isn’t any money to recover from him, because his bank accounts “rarely have more than 10,000 rubles” (that’s less than $150). He also drew attention to the fact that Tanuki filed its lawsuit with the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court, which recently handed down the ruling that outlawed Male State as an extremist organization.
The name “Male State” (Muzhskoe Gosudarstvo in Russian) was linked to a number of private groups on the Russian social network VKontakte that proclaimed an ideology described as “national patriarchy.” The social network blocked Male State in 2020, but the group remained active on Telegram. On October 18, 2021, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court outlawed the online movement “Male State” as an extremist organization, thus banning its activities in Russia.
Male State’s founder, Vladislav Pozdnyakov, was handed a two-year suspended sentence in 2018 for inciting hatred against women. His sentence was overturned three months later, after which Pozdnyakov left Russia.
In August 2021, Pozdnyakov urged his followers to go after the restaurant chain Tanuki for featuring a Black model and the rainbow flag in its marketing materials. The company fought back, urging its customers to reach out to Telegram founder Pavel Durov and demand that the messaging platform block Pozdnyakov’s channel. At the request of Apple and Google, Telegram shut down Pozdnyakov’s main channel, but he still has several backups.