A police report has been filed against the editor-in-chief of FBRK for disseminating false information. The situation is bizarre: a private company, LLP «Sunkar Eavision International LLP», has accused the journalist of lying for publishing their own price quotation from official state documents.
Furthermore, the complaint was submitted in breach of procedure, and the company is represented by a lawyer who previously acted against FBRK founder Kirill Pavlov on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture.
The company accused the editor-in-chief of violating Article 456-2 of the Administrative Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan for publishing material stating that LLP «Sunkar Eavision International» initially offered to supply 80 drones at a price of 7.1 million tenge each, but ultimately received a contract at 8 million tenge per unit. The complainants claim that the figure of 7.1 million tenge is inaccurate.
However, the public procurement portal, in the appendix to the competition order, contains precisely this information: LLP «Sunkar Eavision International LLP» offered 80 drones at a price of 7.1 million tenge each. In reality, the drones were ultimately purchased at 8 million tenge per unit. This means the company is demanding that an exact quotation of its own official proposal from a state document be recognised as false information.
Equally absurd are the procedural violations in the complaint itself. LLP «Sunkar Eavision International LLP» addressed it to a natural person, even though the publication was made on behalf of a registered media outlet.
Moreover, the editor-in-chief's personal data was not published in the public domain and was only provided to state bodies when submitting official requests as part of journalistic activities, including to the State Inspection Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture in connection with requests regarding the procurement of drones for locust control.
Furthermore, official requests are always accompanied by the media outlet's registration certificate. This raises a logical question: if the company was able to obtain the editor-in-chief's personal data from these documents, why did it not use the contact details of the editorial office itself and send a complaint to the media outlet, as required by law? How the private company obtained the editor-in-chief's personal data is a matter for law enforcement to determine.
It is noteworthy that the complainant is represented by a lawyer who previously represented the Ministry of Agriculture in court proceedings against FBRK founder Kirill Pavlov. At that time, the expert was fined for a publication about a locust infestation based on data from international organisations that differed from official statistics.
The coincidence appears no accident: one lawyer first defends the ministry against the FBRK founder, and then a private company against the editor-in-chief of the same publication. Meanwhile, the source of the editor-in-chief's personal data could only have been the state bodies to whom it was provided in response to official requests.
In response to these events, the editor-in-chief intends to file a counter-complaint demanding an investigation into the legality of the private company's use of her personal data.
The FBRK editorial team calls on the Prosecutor General's Office, the Presidential Administration, and international observers to pay attention to the pressure being exerted on independent media by state and private entities linked to the government.