# Concord Management and Consulting The St. Petersburg holding company, with its sister Concord Catering, of [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]] — "Putin's chef." Concord's catering contracts made Prigozhin rich; its money funded the [[Internet Research Agency]], the troll farm at the center of [[Project Lakhta]]. Indicted by [[Robert Mueller]] in 2018, it is the only defendant in the Russian election cases that actually showed up in an American court — and the case against it was dropped because it did. ## Timeline | Date | Event | |---|---| | 1995 | Prigozhin founds Concord; his mother is later listed as owner | | Dec 2016 / June 2017 | U.S. sanctions on Prigozhin, then on Concord | | Feb 2018 | Mueller indicts 13 Russians and three entities — the IRA, Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering — for funding and running the IRA's U.S. operation from 2014 | | May 2018 | Concord appears in court through U.S. lawyers and fights aggressively over discovery | | Mar 16, 2020 | The Justice Department drops the charges against both Concord companies weeks before trial | | Nov 2022 / Feb 2023 | Prigozhin publicly admits election interference and says of the IRA, "I invented it, I created it" | | Aug 23, 2023 | Prigozhin dies in a plane crash two months after the [[Wagner Group]] mutiny | ## Why the case was dropped The Justice Department gave two reasons: a trial "risks publicizing sensitive law enforcement information," and Concord had "provided misleading documents" and ignored trial subpoenas. Prosecutors said the company was "eager and aggressive in using the judicial system to gather information about how the United States detects … foreign election interference." Judge Dabney Friedrich granted the dismissal. The charges against the IRA and the 13 individuals remain. > [!warning] What the dismissal was — and wasn't > The case was not dropped for lack of evidence. It was dropped because the defendant was using discovery to learn U.S. counterintelligence methods while refusing to comply itself. Prigozhin later confessed to the conduct. "They dropped the Russia case" is a common right-wing talking point that leaves this out. ## See Also - [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]] · [[Wagner Group]] - [[Internet Research Agency]] · [[Project Lakhta]] · [[Troll Farms]] - [[Mueller Investigation]] · [[Russian Election Interference]]