While artistic director Kirill Serebrennikov is out of the line of fire, the former managing director of Gogol Center and former general producer of Gogol Centre’s The Seventh Studio, Aleksei Malobrodsky, was arrested on June 21. Also in jail while being investigated and tried is former bookkeeper Nina Maslyaeva. Former general director of the Seventh Studio, Yury Itin, is under house arrest while being investigated and tried.
Malobrodsky is charged with embezzling 2.3 million rubles (about $38,700) allocated for organization of the “Platforma” festival and the production “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Theater journals contain articles and reviews evidencing that the play was performed at “Platforma 2015” festival and has been in repertory at Gogol Center since 2012, playing in Paris at the Théâtre National de Chaillot and at the Baltic House festival. Teatral online calls the theatre commuity to resist against the absurd accusations (John Freedman has an English translation).

According to investigators, unidentified persons from management of the Seventh Studio, a stage company created by Serebrennikov on the basis of his acting and directing course in the Moscow Art Theatre School, embezzled 200 million rubles (about $3.5 million) allocated by the government for development and popularization of art in Russia from 2011 to 2014.

Source: Russian Legal Information Agency