14 DAY TRIAL // Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, a Russian national of St. Petersburg, was charged today for allegedly having a core role in a Russian conspiracy to interfere in the U.S. political system, starting in 2016 and ending in 2018 when it would've targeted the U.S. midterm election.
“The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow Discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” said U.S. Attorney Terwilliger.
As the criminal complaint (.PDF) against Khusyaynova filed on September 28 details, the Russian national was the alleged accountant of "Project Lakhta," the codename of a Russian conspiracy conducting "information warfare against the United States."
Project Lakhta is also reportedly funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin through two of his companies, Concord Catering, and Concord Management and Consulting LLC.
The criminal complaint against Khusyaynova follows Viktorovich Prigozhin's indictment for trying to "defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016."
Khusyaynova was the one who reportedly managed Project Lakhta's $35 million budget between January 2016 and June 2018
Project Lakhta's various components were designed to target multiple audiences, ranging from Russian Federation citizens to foreigners from the Europan Union and the United States among many others.
As detailed in the Office of Public Affairs' press release, Khusyaynova was the head of the financial management unit for the Russian Project Lakhta conspiracy and she was allegedly the one supervising a budget of more than $35 million between January 2016 and June 2018, with only a part of it being directed to the United States operations.
The Project Lakhta conspirators did their best to appear as American political activists using VPNs to hide their location and fake social media accounts to create division in the U.S. audiences they targeted.
"The criminal complaint does not include any allegation that Khusyaynova or the broader conspiracy had any effect on the outcome of an election. The complaint also does not allege that any American knowingly participated in the Project Lakhta operation," also says DoJ's press release.