Seven employees of Sputnik Azerbaijan, a branch of the Russian propaganda media outlet Rossiya Segodnya, were detained in Baku.
This is reported by the Azerbaijani media outlet Qafqaz Info.
Law enforcement officers have launched a criminal investigation under articles of fraud, illegal entrepreneurship, and money laundering. Two people have been arrested.
The detentions took place the day before, on June 30. Then, security forces came to search the Sputnik Azerbaijan office in Baku. Sources from the Azerbaijani APA agency said at the time that law enforcement officers detained two FSB officers who worked for the media outlet.
Report writes that the director of Sputnik-Azerbaijan Ihor Kartavikh and the editor-in-chief Yevgenii Belousov were detained.
In February 2025, Azerbaijan made a decision to suspend the activities of the Sputnik Azerbaijan agency. In this way, the local authorities wanted to ensure parity in the activities of Azerbaijani state media abroad and foreign journalists in the country — the number of Sputnik Azerbaijan journalists working in Baku was to be equal to the number of AZERTAC journalists in Russia.
However, the editorial office of Sputnik Azerbaijan did not implement this decision, and the editorial staff and staff did not stop their activities.
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