Blogger Elena Blinovskaya was detained on the morning of April 27 near the border with Belarus. The author of popular motivational courses, nicknamed the “queen of marathons”, is suspected of tax evasion in the amount of more than 918 million rubles and money laundering. Izvestia sources do not rule out that the blogger was warned about possible troubles – a criminal case was opened only on April 26, and immediately after that she hastily rented a car and tried to leave the country. UK approvesthat Blinovskaya split the business into dozens of legal entities, thus underestimating the income received and the tax base. The blogger faces three to seven years in prison, but if she pays the debt, she can qualify for a suspended sentence, experts interviewed by Izvestia believe.
Even the day before, on April 26, the blogger spoke to an audience of thousands at the AMOCONF 2023 business forum with a motivational speech on how to achieve success.
Now the blogger’s office and home addresses, including the elite village of Millennium Park in Istra, are being searched. The live video shows parked luxury foreign cars Lamborghini and Range Rover, two motorcycles in the garage. Inside, the security forces found gold, diamonds, expensive bags and accessories.
Blinovskaya herself and her husband Alexei are under interrogation. Izvestia found out that 13 companies were registered on Blinovsky, in particular, a jewelry house, a mining enterprise, machine-building and fish production.
TASS, 04/27/2023, “Investigators are interrogating the husband of Blinovskaya, who was detained for non-payment of taxes”: Investigators of the Investigative Committee are interrogating the husband of blogger Elena Blinovskaya, businessman Alexei, through his company she could withdraw money. This was reported to TASS on Thursday by law enforcement agencies.
“Currently, Elena Blinovskaya’s husband, Alexei, is under interrogation. According to preliminary data, the blogger could withdraw money through his company,” the agency’s interlocutor said. According to him, preliminary, the man is as a witness. — Inset K.ru
A Izvestia source close to law enforcement agencies said that income from marathons and other business projects went to the settlement accounts of 18 organizations controlled by Blinovskaya and three individual entrepreneurs who worked under a simplified taxation system. All these LLCs and individual entrepreneurs are registered not in Moscow, but in the regions: Chechnya, Murmansk, Yaroslavl, Tver, Kostroma, Vologda regions, Altai Territory and St. Petersburg. The source notes that, for example, the blogger could legalize 43 million rubles by transferring funds from the settlement accounts of companies controlled by her to the accounts of other organizations, thus paying for a car that became the property of her husband.
According to the Association of Bloggers and Agencies (ABA) and the LiveDune social network analytics and management service for Izvestia, Elena Blinovskaya could have earned about 450 million rubles over the past year.
desires and relationships
Elena Blinovskaya is 41 years old, she is the mother of four children and the wife of a prominent businessman Alexei Blinovsky. She gained fame as the author of the popular training “Marathon of Desires”, a life coach and a millionaire blogger.
Wish Marathon is an online course consisting of 20-30 lessons. Each of them includes a task: for example, make a list of your most secret desires or clean the house of old things. The author promised to help people get rid of psychological problems and learn how to fulfill their dreams. The first week of participation in the “Marathon of Desires” is free, it is proposed to pay for further classes. Cost – from 4.5 thousand rubles. for a standard package up to 200-300 thousand rubles. for each stage of the “marathon”, if we are talking about a VIP package with a personal “mentor”.
@breakingmash, 27.04.2023 11:26: Events at Blinovskaya were scheduled for many months ahead. She took air tickets to Tashkent to fly there to the seminar “The Fourth Dimension” on April 28. Collected sold-out at the local Renaissance Hall, but the performance had to be canceled for obvious reasons.
On May 19, another financial marathon was planned – “New Dimension”. For a regular tariff with eight broadcasts in the recording and a personal curator, they asked for 10,800 rubles. For a VIP rate (10 seats) with Blinovskaya’s husband, Alexei, they have already asked for half a million rubles. And for the VIP tariff with Elena herself, they already took a million. And all the same eight pre-recorded broadcasts, but the opportunity to fly to the guru in a personal.
In June, Blinovskaya was going to launch another marathon – “Pride”. The price is the same. For a VIP with a blogger, they demanded a classic million. — Inset K.ru
Blinovskaya arranged her first “marathons of desires” among her friends: in 2015 they were held in the format of a game using various psychological techniques and techniques of famous life coaches. Soon the blogger began to expand her audience by attracting subscribers from social networks. Despite the mixed reviews, already in 2016 the project became massive, thousands of people began to take part in it.
In 2020, interest in Blinovskaya’s training was “warmed up” by the film “Marathon of Desires”, released in 2020. The main roles in the film were played by Kirill Nagiyev, Aglaya Tarasova and Maria Minogarova, and the blogger herself became the producer of the film.
In 2022, Blinovskaya became the host of the House of Wish Fulfillment show on TV-3. Then she had already launched five projects: in addition to the “Marathon of Desires”, also “Become and Get” (with a minimum package of services for 6 thousand rubles), “Financial Marathon” (5 thousand), “Purpose” (7 thousand .) and “About relationships” (10 thousand).
Forbes.ru, 04/27/2023, “The author of the “Marathon of Desires” Blinovskaya was detained in the case of tax evasion”: Blinovskaya created one of the first popular online marathons in Russia. In 2015, on Instagram (owned by Meta, an extremist organization recognized in Russia and banned), the blogger announced the launch of the “Marathon of Desires” – a course of lectures and practical classes on personal growth. Since then, about 150,000 people have taken part in the project, which brought Blinovskaya several hundred million rubles in revenue, estimated at conversation with Forbes founder of the celebrity agency Didenok Team Kirill Didenok.
Later, in addition to the flagship Marathon of Desires, Blinovskaya launched trainings on financial well-being and relationships. Her husband Aleksey Blinovsky joined the business, who at the end of 2019 registered Podari Mechtu LLC, and at the end of 2020 another legal entity with the same name, follows from SPARK-Interfax data. The trademark “Marathon of Desires” is registered at IP Blinovskaya.
IN conversation with Forbes the blogger did not disclose the dynamics of financial performance and the number of marathon participants, but said that in the first months of the pandemic, the company had “record sales”. According to Didenok, the annual audience of the “Marathon of Wishes” has increased from 5,000 people in 2017 to 100,000 in 2020, the business revenue in 2020 amounted to 330 million rubles, profit – 200 million rubles. — Inset K.ru
@zhabaigaduka, 04/27/2023 03:27 PM: And here’s another remark about the Blinovskys and taxes. You will be very surprised, but Elena Blinovskaya’s husband Alexei, or rather his company “Give a Dream” is resident of Skolkovo. The company card on the website of the innovation city says that the company is solving the problem of customizing payment cards. But what is not indicated on the Skolkovo website is that, in addition to the payment site, Give a Dream saw a mobile application for Blinovskaya Dream On marathons (hardly for free?). And we remind you that Skolkovo residents can receive exemption from VAT, corporate property tax and income tax, as well as the right to tax profits at a rate of 0%. They are also eligible for reduced insurance premiums. And the company Podari Mechtu LLC took advantage of this right. — Inset K.ru
@zhabaigaduka, 27.04.2023 13:38: The Blinovskys don’t seem to pay taxes, not only in Russia. As the Toad and the Viper found out, the husband of the infogypsy Elena Blinovskaya, Alexei, registered the company Grant a Dream in the United States in 2021, and a year later the American authorities liquidated the company just for failing to submit a tax return on time. By the way, the Blinovskys’ company in the USA can talk about the presence of the American residence permit in the four Blinovskys. — Inset K.ru
Tax cleanups
In March 2023, after the blogger was detained Valeria Chekalina and accusations of the coach Alexandra Mitroshina in tax crimes Izvestia reportedthat Elena Blinovskaya is also being checked by the police. She herself denied this information.
“I’m fine,” she said. – Everyone grabbed some incomprehensible news for no reason and begin to spread it.
The blogger also stated that she has no problems with taxes, because she pays VAT without using fraudulent schemes.
Having looked at only a part of the products on the official website of Elena Blinovskaya, you can find at least four legal entities for which her marathons are registered, Anastasia Krasnikova, ABA lawyer, drew attention.
“We can assume that, by analogy with Chekalina and Mitroshina, she crushed the business,” the expert told Izvestia.
Under articles on tax evasion and money laundering on an especially large scale, Blinovskaya could face from three to seven years in prison, as well as a fine, said Yury Oblikov, a lawyer for the Moscow Bar Association. But a blogger can completely avoid criminal punishment under the tax evasion article if he pays all the debt to the budget.
“However, in money laundering, there is no such possibility by law to terminate a criminal case. In practice, courts usually do not impose real imprisonment under this article,” the expert explained, adding that the blogger’s attempt to leave the country may affect the severity of the measure of restraint chosen.
In any case, arrests will be made on the accounts of Elena Blinovskaya, and as part of the searches, property and valuables will be confiscated at the initial stage in order to ensure the repayment of damage to the state, lawyer Anastasia Selivanova, managing partner of the Legart Law Office, told Izvestia.
The trend of bringing bloggers to criminal responsibility for tax evasion will continue, she is sure. In the near future, according to the lawyer, mass checks of top bloggers by tax and law enforcement agencies will be carried out, and new criminal cases are not ruled out as a result.
@bazabazon, 04/27/2023 10:36 AM: Elena Blinovskaya is unlikely to be the last blogger to be prosecuted for taxes. The tax service has created a special department to check the wealthy Russians who make money with the help of social networks. According to Baza, the “blogging” department in the Federal Tax Service was created recently. The task of the tax authorities is to check all bloggers who earn more than 50 million rubles a year. That is, track how much money they received in affiliated accounts, and then clarify how much of it was paid in taxes. According to a Baza source, “no one paid taxes,” so the number of criminal cases against bloggers may soon increase. — Inset K.ru
