Manana Aslamazyan, general director of the Educated Media Foundation, the legal successor to the Internews noncommercial organization, has announced that she is leaving her post and will work abroad. An investigative committee of the Interior Ministry intends to charge her with smuggling for illegally bringing €9500 into Russia. Her decision means the end of the work of Russia's largest media-education foundation. More than 2000 media workers sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which went unanswered.

In January of this year, Aslamazyan was detained in Sheremetyevo-2 Airport after she was discovered to be carrying €9500. The maximum allowable undeclared cash import is $10,000. That violation is usually punished by a fine, but an Interior Ministry investigative committee stepped into her case. In April, the committee seized the Educated Media Foundation's databases, and in May it froze its financial accounts, put an end to the foundation's operation. Fifty foundation employees were dismissed, leaving ten to complete current projects and attend to the final accounting. Almost all of the foundation's former employees went to work at the Higher School of Economics' Higher School of Journalism. Aslamazyan continues to work as a consultant for Internews International, of which Educated Media was a part.

“I do not intend to ask for refuge or the citizenship of another country. I will pay the taxes in Russia and wait for a court to determine why my personal mistake was made grounds for stopping the work of Educated Media,” Alsamazyan said from Paris.

Igor Tsokolov, head of the Interior Ministry's investigative committee's department for investigating organized crime, stated yesterday that “We are ready to charge Manana Aslamazyan with a gross violation of the Russian criminal code.” Aslamazyan's lawyer Boris Kuznetsov stated that his client violation is minor. “It's useless to fight the state machine,” noted Irina Yasina, former head of the Open Russia Foundation, which closed when the Prosecutor General's Office froze its financial accounts.