Sex coach linked to Deripaska scandal accused in harassment cases
Russia's Investigative Committee opened a case against Alexander Kirillov, also known as Alex Lesley, on suspicion of inducement to rape after he urged men to grab women in the street by the buttocks and offer them sex.
The advice, given openly on his YouTube channel, led to numerous complaints from women claiming to have been harassed by his followers in Moscow since last week.
Kirillov, 43, who is currently outside Russia, came to public attention in 2018 when he was linked to Anastasia Vashukevich, 35, a Belarusian escort also known on social media as Nastya Rybka, who wrote a book called How to Seduce a Billionaire.
She revealed in Instagram posts that she had been on a yacht belonging to the Russian metals and energy tycoon Oleg Deripaska in 2016 when he held a meeting with Sergei Prikhodko, Russia's deputy prime minister, a fact that the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny picked up on as a sign of corruption.
Vashukevich later claimed to have evidence that the two men had been involved in a Kremlin attempt to skew the US presidential election in favour of Donald Trump.
Deripaska and Prikhodko both denied wrongdoing. Vashukevich and her 'pick-up coach' Kirillov were arrested in Thailand for holding illegal 'sex training' seminars in the country. They were deported to Moscow and arrested but then released.
The current scandal broke out last week when at least ten young women told Russian media that men, some of them filmed by accomplices, had groped them in public places in Moscow and suggested that they had sex.
Two Russian MPs complained to the Investigative Committee, linking the incidents to Kirillov. The committee then opened its case, saying that he had 'induced his followers to commit illegal acts of a sexual character towards female residents of the capital'.
Two men have already been handed 15-day jail sentences for hooliganism over the incidents and a third was remanded in custody in connection with the case against Kirillov.
Kirillov, a Belarusian, told Moskva-24 from an unnamed location that he was unfazed by the allegations. 'If we lived in America or Germany, God forbid, then it could result in serious consequences,' he said. 'Happily, we are so far in Russia.'
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