Swindler who attacked Izvestiya journalists sentenced to 2.5 years in prison

Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow sentenced marriage scammer Roman Pavlov, who attacked the Izvestia film crew, to compulsory labor for a period of 2 years and 6 months. This was reported on February 17 by lawyer Ivan Dyachenko, representing the interests of the injured cameraman Oleg Klishin.

According to the Izvestia source, the defendant does not intend to appeal the verdict. Pavlov himself has already been tried and is now a defendant in a case of especially large-scale fraud in the field of marriage services.

Izvestia correspondent Natalia Grafchikova and her colleagues were attacked on October 31 during the shooting of material for the issue of "The Final Program with Petr Marchenko". The journalists went to a supposedly closed dating club owned by Pavlov. The man jumped on Izvestia cameraman Oleg Klishin and used a choke hold against him. As a result, the cameraman was injured and the equipment was damaged.

On the same day a criminal case was opened under part 3 of Article 144 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Obstruction of lawful professional activity of journalists"). In November the case of the marriage swindlers was returned to the prosecutor's office due to violations in the preparation of the indictment. It was noted that the defendants were charged with part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Fraud on a large scale").