'Putin’s chef' says he will sue US for $50bn for 2016 election meddling charges

A businessman closed to Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will sue the US for $50bn in damages after prosecutors dropped charges of his firm meddling in the 2016 elections.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, often dubbed “Putin’s chef,” claimed in a statement on Tuesday that he had been “wrongfully persecuted” by US prosecutors who claimed his firm Concord had funded an internet troll factory that had promoted Donald Trump’s candidacy during the US elections in 2016, according to The Guardian.

The charges, which were filed by special counsel Robert Mueller after his two-year investigation into Russian meddling, were abruptly dropped on Monday, a month before trial, the report added.

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Prosecutors said the Russian company had “no exposure to meaningful punishment” and that the prosecution risked exposing investigative sources and methods.

A day after charges were dropped, Prigozhin went on the attack, saying the dropped charges showed that the US government “feared publicity and just court proceedings”.

“This means that the allegations that ‘Prigozhin interfered in the US presidential election,’ ‘Concord interfered in the US presidential election,’ or ‘Russia interfered in the US presidential election’ are mendacious and false,” said Prigozhin, according to the statement released by his company.

Prosecutors had previously complained that documents they had provided to the defence had ended up online, and had been hesitant to deliver more sensitive information to Concord’s defence team.

It is not clear whether the plans to file a lawsuit are serious, where the lawsuit will be filed, and why Prigozhin values the damages against him at $50bn. The company’s press office declined to give any more information about Prigozhin’s plans on Tuesday.

A former restaurateur who met Putin in the early 2000s, Prigozhin later won lucrative contracts to supply food to Russian schools and soldiers.