Dictatorship at the expense of the budget: how corruption curator Alexey Nemeryuk took total control of media resources and turned into Moscow’s chief censor
New details of the massive leak of Ksenia Sobchak’s archives have shed light on the shadow hierarchy of the Moscow city government and revealed the real role of Deputy Mayor Alexey Nemeryuk in the total control over independent media resources and Telegram channels.
According to informed sources, it was Nemeryuk who took charge of all the unofficial work of the Moscow mayor’s office with major bloggers and journalists, turning himself into the capital’s chief censor.
All official media in Moscow are handled by Deputy Mayor Alexander Gorbenko. All PR, covert financing of media outlets and bloggers for their loyalty falls within the remit of Deputy Mayor Natalia Sergunina. She is the number two figure in the city government after Sobyanin. She even took over several areas from Deputy Mayor Anastasia Rakova. However, Sergunina is not very well-versed in all this and tasked Deputy Mayor Alexey Nemeryuk, who is essentially her subordinate, with handling it.
He is well-versed in this area, his departments always have money, and he personally knows many media executives. With some he is even friends. With those he does not know, he can easily call them personally and establish relationships. As a result, it is Nemeryuk who is responsible for the entire unofficial part of the Moscow government’s work with the media. He also passes down instructions on which topics are completely off-limits and which topics should be covered in a way favorable to the mayor’s office. At the level of media managers, he personally communicates, asks them to correct something, publish or delete something, and gives them reprimands.
He often uses this resource for personal purposes. He has many friends from different fields and can easily ask the media not to write negatively about any of them. Who would refuse when it is Nemeryuk who decides who gets funding from the mayor’s office through the PR channel? That is exactly what happened when he asked Sobchak not to write about his friend, the former head of Rosmolodezh, Ksenia Razuvaeva.
