Friday, March 04, 2022

Ex-Fox News Producer Broke Law With Work for Russian Oligarch, U.S. Says


March 4, 2022


A former Fox News producer was charged on Thursday with violating U.S. sanctions by working for a Russian oligarch who has been accused of being a leading financial supporter of separatists in Crimea and eastern Ukraine and has close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin.

The producer, John Hanick, was arrested in London last month and charged in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in what federal prosecutors said was the first such indictment stemming from sanctions imposed as a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Konstantin Malofeev — the oligarch who employed Mr. Hanick, according to the indictment — was labeled “one of the main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea” by the Treasury Department when the sanctions were put in place in December 2014. Mr. Hanick worked for Mr. Malofeev from 2013 to 2017.

The case against Mr. Hanick, a 71-year-old U.S. citizen, was announced as the United States and much of the rest of the world continue to punish Russia financially amid broader efforts to halt its war on Ukraine. On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced a new task force to “hold accountable corrupt Russian oligarchs” who had supported the invasion.

Although the charges against Mr. Hanick arise from eight-year-old sanctions, they are of a piece with other steps the United States and its allies have taken more recently and indicate that the federal authorities will use every available lever to exert pressure on Mr. Putin and his circle.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, emphasized the point in a statement.

The charges, he said, showed a “commitment to the enforcement of laws intended to hamstring those who would use their wealth to undermine fundamental democratic processes.”

Mr. Hanick, who was with Fox News at its inception and spent 15 years at the network before leaving in 2011, is charged in the indictment with one count of violating sanctions and another of lying to F.B.I. agents who interviewed him last year.


Lawyers for Mr. Hanick could not be reached for comment. A Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mr. Malofeev, a banker and devoted follower of the Russian Orthodox faith, is one of Russia’s most influential magnates and among the most prominent conservatives within the country’s Kremlin-allied elite. (The indictment renders his surname as Malofeyev).


He is a bulwark of Mr. Putin’s support on the Russian right, has ties to far-right politicians in the United States and Europe and has been accused of financing separatists in eastern Ukraine in addition to his activities in Crimea. He has denied the accusations.

He has also been a main figure in a push meant to increase Russia’s influence in Africa while diminishing that of Western nations.

Mr. Hanick’s work for Mr. Malofeev involved developing media outlets in Russia, Greece, Bulgaria and elsewhere, according to the indictment. He moved to Russia in July 2013 after negotiating an employment agreement “directly with Malofeev” that provided for a salary, a $5,000 monthly housing stipend and health insurance, the indictment says.

At the start, Mr. Hanick worked mostly on a project to build a Russian cable television news network, which went on the air in April 2015, the government said. Mr. Malofeev was by then subject to the U.S. sanctions as well as similar European measures.

Mr. Hanick played a leadership role at the network, described variously in emails as board chairman, general producer and general adviser, the indictment says.

Former Fox News Director Jack Hanick Indicted for Helping Russia

Jose Pagliery
Thu, March 3, 2022

Screenshot/Right Wing Watch

As the United States increasingly goes after some of the Kremlin’s business tentacles, the latest person arrested for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia is a former Fox News director who left to launch a Russian propaganda network.

The Department of Justice on Thursday revealed that Jack Hanick was quietly arrested in London on Feb. 3 for dodging U.S. sanctions by helping a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeyev, start his right-wing Tsargrad TV.

The DOJ simultaneously unsealed a grand jury indictment against him, accusing Hanick of knowingly engaging in business dealings with Malofeyev, who had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in financing Russia-backed soldiers in eastern Ukraine who have violently tried to break off from the democratic country since 2014.

Sean Hannity’s Ukraine War ‘Plans’ Are Even Dumber Than You Think

The indictment also accuses Hanick of lying to FBI agents about his travels to Greece and Bulgaria to expand the TV network in 2015 and 2016, when he was interviewed by American investigators last year in New York City.

Federal agents assert that many of the damning details about Hanick’s Kremlin adventures were laid out in an unpublished memoir he kept in his email account, which was searched by the feds with a court-approved search warrant.

Malofeyev was sanctioned in December 2014 by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for financing separatists in the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia-aligned fighters there operated with the not-so-secret help of that country's military and used that government’s weapons when they shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers.

Malofeyev (also spelled in the West as Malofeev) started an Orthodox Christian network called Tsargrad TV. In 2020, he launched a similarly named right-wing political group in Russia with an imperialist bent that would—much like the National Rifle Association does in the United States—pressure politicians to toe the conservative line.

I’m a Former Russian TV Anchor. Fox News Mimics State TV.

According to The Warsaw Institute, a Polish-based geopolitical think tank, “Tsargrad” would test political candidates’ adherence to “traditional family, religious, and cultural values of the Russian people.”

The Financial Times in 2015 analyzed how Malofeyev launched his “conservative yet modern spin on global news” in an attempt to mimic the rise of Fox News. Then, in 2018, the online news site Salon called out Hanick for joining the Russian operation, noting that he had previously served as a director for Fox News host Sean Hannity. However, on Thursday, Fox News told The Daily Beast that assertion was wrong and never corrected.

Hanick got his start at Fox News when it first launched in 1996. Fifteen years later, in 2011, he left. Three years later, he joined forces with Malofeyev’s Russian propaganda operation. The Justice Department now wants to extradite him from the United Kingdom to New York City.

Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, issued a statement noting that sanctions “prohibit United States citizens from working for or doing business with Malofeyev but as alleged, Hanick violated those sanctions by working directly for Malofeyev on multiple television projects over the course of several years.”

Williams noted the indictment underscores his office’s “commitment to the enforcement of laws intended to hamstring those who would use their wealth to undermine fundamental democratic processes. This Office will continue to be a leader in the Justice Department’s work to hold accountable actors who would support flagrant and unjustified acts of war.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated Hanick was a producer on Sean Hannity’s show. While he worked at Fox News for 15 years, a Fox spokesperson said he never worked on Hannity’s program.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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