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Model claiming Trump secrets pleads not guilty in Thailand case
PATTAYA, Thailand, Aug 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A Belarusian model who sparked
global intrigue after claiming she had evidence of Russian efforts to help
Donald Trump win office pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of running an
illegal “sex training” class in Thailand.
Anastasia Vashukevich, better known by her pen name Nastya Rybka, has been
detained in Thailand since February when police raided a risque seminar in
the seaside resort city of Pattaya.
Vashukevich had travelled to Thailand after becoming embroiled in a
political scandal with Russian aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska, a onetime
associate of Trump’s now-disgraced former campaign director Paul Manafort.
She set off a scramble for details after she promised in an Instagram video
to reveal “missing puzzle pieces” on claims the Kremlin aided the US
President’s 2016 election victory.
No material has been released to substantiate her claims, and critics have
accused her of a publicity stunt.
Vashukevich and her seven co-defendants arrived at the Pattaya court on
Monday for a pre-trial hearing on the charges that include unlawful assembly
and conspiracy.
Police initially charged the group with work permit violations but later
alleged the seminar, led by self-styled Russian seduction guru Alex Kirillov
and ostensibly a course training participants to be better lovers, was
actually intended to arrange paid sex for participants.
Photos of course participants in detention after the February raid showed
them wearing t-shirts that said “sex animator”.
Kirillov, who has served as a spokesperson for the mostly-Russian group
because he speaks English, told the court that all eight defendants were
pleading not guilty.
“We did not commit any crimes,” he said. “What we do is training on how to
seduce men and women. We do not make any sexual activity.”
Vashukevich cried after the prosecutor showed a photo of several of her co-
defendants hugging at a nightclub after a training session.
“Why was I arrested? Why am I here?” she said.
The next hearing has been set for August 27.
Pattaya, on Thailand’s southern coast, is a party town with a reputation
for vice and a sizeable Russian expatriate community.
Both Washington and Moscow have publically shrugged off Vashukevich’s
story, which US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert described as
“bizarre”.
Additional legal troubles are also awaiting Vashukevich and Kirillov back
in Russia, where Deripaska won an invasion of privacy lawsuit against the duo
last month.
They were ordered to pay $8,000 each to Deripaska, who sued them after a
video apparently filmed by Vashukevich surfaced which appeared to show the
tycoon vacationing with Sergei Prikhodko, an influential Russian deputy prime
minister at the time.
Kremlin-connected Deripaska and Manafort did business together in the mid-
2000s, The New York Times reported last year, but their relationship broke
down into legal wrangling.
Manafort is awaiting a verdict in his own trial on fraud and tax evasion
charges in the US state of Virginia.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1236 hrs