First Lerchek, now Sasha Mitroshina – the tax authorities pressed another blogger

A tail of 200 million rubles has been trailing her since last year. The blogger promised to pay, but a year ago she moved to Dubai. Experts consider this a continuation of the history of the Chekalins, once again predicting the tightening of control by the Federal Tax Service over influencers.

Alexandra Mitroshin was suspected of tax evasion last spring, and in the summer the Federal Tax Service offered her to pay off her debt. The blogger told this story on her social networks, assuring her subscribers that she had always “worked honestly, in good faith, without the intention of deceiving the state” and expressing her readiness to pay for everything.

However, it was precisely in this that Ms. Mitroshina deceived both subscribers and the state, which became the reason for the criminal case.

– According to the investigation, from October 2020 to May 2022, Mitroshina, being an individual entrepreneur and applying a simplified taxation system, having received income from the provision of services for the implementation of education courses in a significantly larger amount than the allowable limit, not wanting to switch to the general taxation system and pay provided for by this tax regime, VAT and personal income tax, used affiliated and controlled by it individual entrepreneurs, the ICR said in a statement.

Law enforcement officers believe that in this way, from her current account, in order to conceal income, she organized the receipt of funds from entrepreneurial activities directly to the above individual entrepreneurs. And evaded paying taxes in the amount of more than 120 million rubles.

Investigators conducted a series of searches, visiting Mitroshina’s apartment in Butovo, where she is registered. However, she does not live there, preferring either apartments in Moscow City or a 110-meter apartment bought near the State Duma for 200 million rubles.

The law enforcement officers did not get to the apartment worth $300,000 in Dubai, where the blogger has been living since February last year. But, according to Kommersant’s information, they intend to seize her Russian property to compensate for the alleged damage.

Mitroshina Alexandra Alexandrovna (Sasha Mitroshina) was born on June 27, 1994 in Petrozavodsk (Karelia).

In 2015 she graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University, in 2017 she graduated from the Higher School of Economics with a master’s degree in Media Production in the Creative Industries. After graduation, she worked at Mail.Ru and at the Moscow FM radio station.

Since 2011, he has been running a personal blog on Instagram (owned by Meta – recognized as an extremist organization and banned in Russia). At the start, I wrote about gadgets and travel. The number of subscribers grew noticeably after three or four years, when Sasha Mitroshina began to publish posts about fitness and a healthy lifestyle and photos from karate training, which she had been doing since childhood.

She now has 4.2 million followers on Instagram.

She also leads the Mother of God (and Cats) channel in Telegram (226 thousand subscribers, the name at the start is “Cats, hats, I’m not pregnant”) and the Mother of God podcast (248 thousand subscribers on YouTube, also published as audio podcast).

In July 2019, she became widely famous after she organized a flash mob demanding the criminalization of domestic violence #YaneWantedToDie.

According to Medialogy, from July 18 to July 31, 2019, users posted at least 26,000 messages on social networks under this hashtag. In them, women told personal stories about domestic violence and posted photos with bruises, abrasions and bruises – the organizers created special filter masks with makeup imitating them.

In August of the same year, human rights activist Alena Popova (recognized as a foreign agent in Russia), together with Sasha Mitroshina, launched the You Are Not Alone Mutual Aid Network for Victims of Domestic Violence. The project website says that over the years they have helped 5,000 affected women.

According to the advertising seller Avtorskie Media, 68% of Sasha Mitroshina’s subscribers live in Russia. Most of them are women with an active lifestyle. According to price lists for March 2023, a photo post on Instagram costs 4.6 million rubles, a post on Telegram costs 330,000 rubles, and an advertising insert in a podcast 1.5–2 minutes long costs 5 million rubles. Advertisers include Alfa-Bank, Skypro online courses and The Act cosmetic brand.

In August 2019, Sasha Mitroshina’s book “Promotion of personal blogs on Instagram” was also published, in August 2020 – a mini-series on the same topic “Gone to be a blogger”.

According to Ms. Mitroshina, advertising on social networks is not the main part of her income. Among other things, she released the author’s workouts “Precise Fitness” together with bodybuilder Dima Putylin, conducts courses and trainings on the promotion of social networks.

According to Alexandra Mitroshina’s own estimates, in 2021, personal projects brought her about 303 million rubles. The most famous among them is the course “Instalogy”.

It was launched together with stylist and blogger Sasha Ketova in June 2017. In September 2020, after a conflict between the co-founders, Sasha Mitroshina launched a separate course, Instalogy 2.0. According to media reports, it cost from 40 thousand to 500 thousand rubles. Now the Instalogy course of 30 video lectures costs from 109.9 thousand to 1 million rubles.

Earlier, BV wrote that the criminal case against the Chekalins, who have more than 13 million followers on social networks and who received additional 311 million rubles from the tax authorities, is only the first sign. And, according to experts, law enforcement officers and the Federal Tax Service thoroughly took up influencers and their income. This is not only an obvious way to replenish the budget, but also to control this area.

Unlike Valeria and Artem Chekalins, Alexandra Mitroshina, for example, turned out to be an active social activist. She is a supporter of Alexei Navalny, and also opposed the holding of the NWO.

Reference. IP Mitroshina Alexandra Alexandrovna was registered on October 18, 2017, has OKVED in the field of education, retail, advertising, fitness and serving drinks. Trademarks Mitroshina, Exact Fitness, Moovaspace, etc. have been registered on the IP. An application has been filed for the trademark Mother of God. As a SME entity, it received grants and subsidies from the Federal Tax Service for a total of 166 thousand rubles. From October 2019 to September 2022, the blogger was the founder of Innovative Technologies for Bloggers LLC and Tyneodna LLC, which brought a very modest income from online trading. In August, in the rating of the research holding “Romir” in terms of audience trust in Internet figures, she took sixth place. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the Forbes 30 Under 30 Award in the New Media category.