The Russian proto-celebrities who bared nearly all in December’s “Almost Naked Party” in Moscow’s Mutabor nightclub who thought their problems had gone away were soon tangled up in lawsuits amounting to millions of dollars and property loss, along with possible banishment from future lucrative work.
The backlash against Anastasia Ivleeva, the organizer of the party in which Moscow’s “in-crowd” paraded in lingerie and raunchy costumes, as well as other attendees and the sponsor, mobile communications supplier MTS, just won’t go away.
Iveleeva must have thought she had dodged a bullet last Wednesday when Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court rejected, for “technical reasons,” a class-action lawsuit against her and others that sought ₽1 billion ($11.3 million) in “moral damages.”
However, she would have woken to the news today that two further cases have been lodged; one with Moscow’s Tagansky District Court and the other with a court in Vsevolzhsk, in the Leningrad Region.
The Moscow case was registered as a class action on behalf of 22 plaintiffs who say they and millions of other Russian citizens have been subjected to “moral suffering” by witnessing images of the event. They are demanding that Ivleeva and MTS, as co-defendant, be forced to transfer ₽1 billion ($11.3 million) to the Defenders of the Fatherland support fund for troops taking part in the war in Ukraine.
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The claimants also demand that Ivleeva’s property be seized, and that she be banned from holding future events and profiting from advertising products.
The lawsuit in Vsevolzhsk which was also filed on Jan. 17, a lawsuit that was raised on behalf of a female member of the Morozov-Zlatoust religious brotherhood and was filed on her behalf by Alexander Morozov, who is also the head of this religious organization.
The basis of her claim, as reported by the state-owned RIA Novosti news site, was that she had seen a video of the party and was subjected to obscene language and LGBT propaganda. She also claims the defendants are deliberately “disseminating destructive information on social networks that undermines the foundations of state policy to strengthen spiritual and moral values.”
These actions, according to the suit, “caused her and her minor child moral and physical suffering, feelings of hopelessness, doom, and fear for the future of their children, grandchildren, and the future of Russia.”
The anonymous plaintiff names Ivleeva, rapper Vacio (Nikolai Vasiliev), Lolita, Philip Kirkorov and Dima Bilan as joint defendants and demands each be fined ₽200 million ($2.26 million) and have any and all honorific titles removed. The lawsuit also names the Russian Ministry of Culture as a defendant without demanding any reparations from the government department.
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The independent Russian news site The Insider said that previously other attendees of the party had tried to atone for their transgression in a number of novel, if not bizarre ways , most of which did not go down well with the “paying public.” The independent Russian news site The Insider gave details of some of their schemes.
Konstantin Sidorkov the developer of musical projects at VKontakte (Russia’s Facebook equivalent) and female singers from the group took humanitarian donations to troops in Russia’s Northern Military District – but then got into hot water for publishing photos of himself and the women on social media. This was interpreted as him boasting of his actions rather than as penance.
Bulgarian-born Russian pop singer, Philip Kirkorov donated ₽5 million rubles to Belgorod’s “Blue Bird” children’s autism charity, which the organization reported as the single largest donation it had received. Kirkorov also said he would give his fees from the NTV New Year's show to the residents of Belgorod who had suffered from the shelling.
On Jan. 7, Mikhail Danilov owner of the Mutabor club, donated fragments said to be religious relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker to the Church of the Sign of the Icon of the Mother of God in Moscow. This in turn caused a scandal as, in 2017, the Vatican had banned the sale of relics as part of an anti-corruption campaign and demanded an explanation as to how the relics could have ended up in Russia.
The Ukrainian-born singer Anna Asti, who also attended the party, made a deal with the Kremlin to perform at selected concerts for free or donate fees to selected charities. Failure to comply could result in her losing her Russian passport – in Ukraine the singer is already considered to be a traitor.
Another performer, Dima Bilan, went to the so-called Donetsk People’s Republc (DNR) and gave gifts to children undergoing treatment in a local trauma hospital. This was portrayed by a number of pro-Russian bloggers as an attempt by a peoples’ favorite to “whiten his butt” and demanded an explanation as to why he “did not come to visit our wounded soldiers.”
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