A team of hackers and researchers from the Dossier Center have uncovered the criminal ecosystem linked to the former prisoner and current head of the Wagner group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, according to the newspaper Le Monde. The investigation has revealed that the conglomerate governed by Prihozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a corporation in which mercenary war criminals, lawyers, thugs, computer scientists and political scientists work hand in hand.
The case has been uncovered by the Dossier Center group, financed by Russian businessman and dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which published a report on March 18 entitled The Cyberarmy of Prigojine. The study collected more than a million internal documents captured by a group of anonymous hackers who probably accessed the servers of Wagner’s boss in the early fall of 2022.
The documents analyzed reveal criminal activities throughout the network of companies that make up the business structure around Prihozhin: the St. Petersburg troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, Concord Group, the parent structure, the Wagner Group and a galaxy of 400 companies, real or fictitious, belonging to the billionaire.
The main conclusion reached by the study is that the company’s activities are “organically linked” with each other. This means that employees who work in one sector of the empire can be very easily reassigned to another sector. “Wounded Wagner fighters are recovering at the recreation center in [the city of Guelendzhik], Defense Ministry officials receive discount cards for the Eliseyevsky luxury grocery store, trolls in Lakhta [a district of San Petersburg] live in buildings built by the Prigozhin construction company and promoted by the Wagner Group. Today, lawyers and financiers are examining concession contracts in St. Petersburg, and tomorrow in Antananarivo or Bangui”, summarizes the investigation. This complex network makes it difficult to apply international sanctions.
A study of the staff and salaries of computer scientists shows that workers are employed in different companies and pivot from one project to another, taking on tasks that have nothing to do with each other: buying plane tickets, organizing leaking or even calculating the materials needed to build coffins for fallen mercenaries in Ukraine. These computer scientists receive, on average, a salary of around 110,000 rubles a month, about 1,327 euros.
The Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary force involved in the Ukrainian war in support of the Soviet Army, operating as an independent branch of the state. This organization, which has close ties to President Vladimir Putin and has been mobilized in conflict zones around the world, gained international recognition during the Domabas War, between 2014 and 2015, where they assisted the separatist forces of the self-proclaimed people’s republics from Donetsk and Lugansk. In recent weeks, its role has been essential for the advance of the Russian army in Ukraine.
