BELARUS ESCORT CHARGED WITH SOLICITATION, CONSPIRACY
>> claims to have evidence of Russian meddling in US elections faces new criminal charges of solicitation and conspiracy, police say.
Anastasia Vashukevich, who says she had a brief affair with the powerful Russian aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska, was arrested in February with nine others at a sex training seminar in Pattaya.
Most have been charged with working without a permit and are awaiting deportation.
Pattaya police chief Col Apichai Krobpetch said Friday that all 10 have now been charged with soliciting for prostitution and conspiracy. He declined to provide details about the charges or to say who brought the case to police.
Ms Vashukevich, 27, who also goes by the name Nastya Rybka, gained notoriety in Russia after she joined a yacht trip with Mr Deripaska in August 2016 as an escort and posted photos of the two of them together.
She also posted an audio recording of Mr Deripaska discussing Russian-US relations with a deputy prime minister, Sergei Prikhodko. Both men are close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Deripaska also had close ties with Paul Manafort, who managed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for five months.
Mr Manafort, who has been indicted on money-laundering charges by special counsel Robert Mueller, owed millions of dollars to Mr Deripaska and offered to give him private briefings on the presidential campaign.
Mr Deripaska was named this week on a list of Russian oligarchs subject to US sanctions in retaliation for various instances of bad behaviour attributed to Russia.
Ms Vashukevich said after her arrest that she had additional audio recordings of visitors to the yacht, including some who spoke English and talked about the US elections. She called herself the “missing link” in the Russia investigation.
The group has asked for asylum in exchange for the recordings.
Alexander Kirillov, 38, whom Ms Vashukevich describes as her seduction coach and who also was arrested at the seminar, has accused the Russian government of staging a covert operation in Thailand in an attempt to silence them.
The two are being held largely incommunicado at a Bangkok detention centre.
Arrest reports and police mobile phone messages show that police were working with a “foreign spy” who went to the oneweek seminar and told police when the time was right to raid the meeting.
It was unclear whether the solicitation charge was connected to the seminar or to an incident that occurred outside the sessions. Several people who attended the workshop described it as relatively tame, with lectures on the art of seduction aimed at male Russian tourists.
Friends of the 10 accused say that two of them were deported to Russia before the new charges were filed. Pol Col Apichai declined to say whether that was the case.