THE TENET MEDIA FRONT
Thank you for visiting our special presentation about the TENET MEDIA Campaign
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
V.
KOSTIANTYN KALASHNIKOV,
a/k/a Kostya,” and
ELENA AFANASYEVA,
ak/a “Lena,”
Defendants.
SEALED INDICTMENT
24 Cr. 24CRIM 519
Chen and Donovan Negotiate The U.S. Company-1 Contract with the “Russians"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- In or about mid-2023, as Chen worked to recruit Dave Rubin and Tim Pool to perform work on behalf of “Eduard Grigoriann,” Chen began negotiating an expanded role for Chen and Donovan and TENETMEDIA in their developing enterprise, as set forth below.
- On or about March 31, 2023, Persona-l emailed Chen a draft of the new contract that we would like to offer.” PersonaOne described the new contract as consisting of two stages: “[t]he pre-talent-signing, where your scope of work is similar to now,” and “the post-talent-signing, which is after we sign [Tim Pool] and [Dave Rubin], with your help.” PersonaOne advised that “the scope of your work will grow substantially to include managing the channel” in the “post-talent-signing” phase, with “new areas of responsibility and our new offered compensation.” In a subsequent email, on or about April 14, 2023, PersonaOne informed Chen that the management and marketing” for the new platform’s social media accounts would “be done by the Russian firm we agreed to hire,” but “[y]ou will of course be the CEO and set the working standard and path for them to follow, and possibly you could hire a few more people from your side to further handle the operational side of things.” On or about April 17, 2023, Chen replied, in part, that Chen was “happy to work with the Russian firm.” As set forth below, this “Russian firm” consisted of KALASHNIKOV and AFANASYEVA, who later monitored and directed TENETMEDIA ‘s activities under the guise of an outside editing firm.
- Donovan worked closely with Chen to negotiate their expanded business arrangement with “Eduard Grigoriann.” For example, in private messages on Discord on or about April 28, 2023, Donovan messaged Chen that “[(They [i.e., the investors] also have full rights to the IP,” and “[s]o if we grow” the platform, “they can still technically take it away.” Chen replied that the “french” clarified that “we own the channel, but they own the rights to the content,” and “so in the event of a split, I think we’d either need to pay them out for the rights or remove the videos,” “but we’d keep the platform,” i.e., TENETMEDIA .
- Donovan also helped Chen recruit additional commentators to work for TENETMEDIA and “Eduard Grigoriann.” For example, on or about May 22, 2023, Chen messaged Donovan on Discord that Chen needed to send “a prospectus for the company” to a potential commentator (“BENNY JOHNSON“). Donovan responded with proposed talking points for the prospectus and added: *Though I think we should probably borrow some of Gregorian’s [sic] language here.” BENNY JOHNSON later agreed to work for TENETMEDIA .
- On or about May 12, 2023, Chen sent an email to PersonaOne in which Chen proposed that “we… keep the contract between us with my Canadian company ([CANADIAN TENET MEDIA ]), but for [Tim Pool]’s contract, it will be through our American subsidiary, [TENETMEDIA ].” In a subsequent email on or about May 19, 2023, Chen explained that Chen wished for “my personal payment [to] be under [CANADIAN TENET MEDIA ] but the payments for the influencers go directly to [TENETMEDIA ].”
- On or about June 13, 2023, consistent with Chen‘s proposal, PersonaOne emailed Chen a final “service agreement” that named Chen, CANADIAN TENET MEDIA , and TENETMEDIA as the service providers. The contract provided for a monthly fee of $8,000 for the “first stage,” a monthly fee of $25,000 per month for the “second stage” after signing Dave Rubin and Tim Pool, and additional performance incentives and commissions for “engagements closed with talents.” The *client” named on the contract was neither “Eduard Grigoriann” nor Hungarian Shell Entity-I nor CzechShellEntityOne, but rather an entity based in the United Kingdom (“UKSHELLEntityOne”) that has no website. After forwarding the contract to Donovan and discussing it with Donovan on Discord, Chen signed the contract.
- Despite describing TENETMEDIA ‘s investor to Dave Rubin and Tim Pool as “Eduard Grigoriann,” a purported finance professional in Western Europe, Chen and Donovan admitted to each other in their private communications that their “investors'” were, in truth and in fact, the Russians”- the same term that Chen and Donovan previously used to refer to RT while working directly under contract with RT, as described above. On or about May 27, 2023, Chen messaged Donovan on Discord: “I’m gonna ask the russians about hiring [Producer-2] this coming week.” Approximately two days later, Chen messaged Producer-2 on Discord: “Here’s a list of responsibilities I sent over to the investors to approve bringing you on, waiting to hear back on timeline, salary.” On or about August 8, 2023, PersonaOne informed Chen and Donovan in Discord that their request to hire a “producer/booker” (i.e., Producer-2) was “approved.”