A former Fox News director has been arrested on charges of aiding a Russian oligarch and violating US sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.
Jack Hanick, also known as “John”, was arrested in London last month following “his years-long work for the sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev”, the US Justice Department (DOJ) announced on Thursday.
The DOJ alleges that Mr Hanick, 47, “knowingly chose to help Malofeyev spread his destabilising messages by establishing, or attempting to establish, TV networks in Russia, Bulgaria, and Greece, in violation of those sanctions”.
That included helping Mr Malofeyev’s Russian Orthodox channel Tsargrad TV spread “destabilising” messages throughout the disputed Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which erupted into conflict in 2014 with the invasion of Russian troops.
“As alleged in the indictment, the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev was previously sanctioned for threatening Ukraine and providing financial support to the Donetsk separatist region,” added assistant attorney general Matthew G Olsen.
2014’s war – which saw the annexation of the Crimea Peninsula on the Black Sea – waged on for eight years before Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine last week, when a further round of US sanctions against Russia and the country’s wealthy were announced,
The DOJ said on Thursday that it “will do everything it can to stamp out Russian aggression and interference”, and reminded Americans that working for or doing business with sanctioned Russians was forbidden.
The FBI said sanctions “imposed by the US government are in place to protect our national interests, as well as the interests of our allies around the world”, following the arrest of Mr Hanick.
The charges brought against Mr Hanick, who is awaiting extradition from London, were described as “the first-ever criminal indictment charging a violation of US sanctions resulting from Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.”
He also allegedly provided false statements when interviewed following his arrest last month.
Lawyers for Mr Hanick, whose LinkedIn reportedly said he formerly worked for CNBC as well as Fox News, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press on Thursday. He could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
In 2015, Mr Malofeyev was quoted by the Financial Times as saying Russian president Vladimir Putin was “a historical leader, the best that Russia has had in 100 years, since before the revolution. We got very lucky”.
NBC/CNBC told The Independent it had no record of Mr Hanick working for them.
Additional reporting by the Associated Press.
