A YouTube network that features a former Langley political candidate as one of its primary contributors has been accused of being funded by Russian operatives in a US Justice Department indictment.
Surrey-raised Lauren Southern, who ran as a Libertarian candidate in the Langley-Aldergrove riding in 2015, was one of the content creators for a right-wing YouTube channel called Tenet Media. Between Nov. 6 last year and July 31 this year, Southern created 94 videos for the site.
The indictment filed in the Southern District of New York targets two Russians, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afansyeva, with violations of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, and with conspiracy to launder almost $10 million that funded the YouTube network.
People charged with a crime are considered innocent until proven guilty in court.
The indictment does not directly identify the network, but notes it is described in its own documents as a "network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues," which matches Tenet Media's masthead.
At least one commentator of Tenet Media, Tim Pool, has put out a statement acknowledging the allegations as of Wednesday, Sept. 4.
Southern was one of the half-dozen prominent right-wing influencers for the network.
Southern's videos for the Tenet Media channel include a number on Canadian issues, including one in which she misrepresents the 2021 controversy over unmarked graves of Indigenous children found at former residential schools and calls the issue a "hoax."
In another video, called 'My home town's been destroyed,' she blames mass immigration for Surrey's "destruction" and says it "doesn't look a lot like Canada" while panning across footage of Sikh temples and Indo-Canadian business.
Southern has in the past defended neo-Nazis and other far right figures. In 2017, she was detained by the Italian Coast Guard after she was on board a boat that tried to interfere with the efforts of a search and rescue craft that was funded by Doctors Without Borders. She has also endorsed conspiracy theories about the so-called "Great Replacement."
The Langley Advanced Times has reached out to Southern for comment.
The indictment claims that the project was supposedly funded by a wealthy European banker named 'Edouard Grigoriann,' although the profile provided to the company founders was fake, and no such person existed.
In fact, prosecutors allege, Kalashnikov and Afansyeva were employees of RT, a Russian media network directly controlled by the Kremlin.
After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, RT was no longer able to operate in the U.S., Canada, or many other western countries due to sanctions. But the editor-in-chief of RT boasted in the 2024 TV interview of creating "an entire empire of covert projects."
Tenet Media was allegedly one of those efforts. None of the employees of Tenet Media are named in the indictment, and Pool's statement he said that if the allegations are true, "I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims."
The highest-level influencers on the channel were well paid.
A key member identified as Commentator 1 was to be paid $400,000 per month plus a $100,000 signing bonus, while Commentator 2's contract was for $100,000 per video.
According to the indictment, Kalashnikov and Afansyeva directed the YouTube channel's operations through the original two founders, and were presented to the other staff of the various channels as "editors" through Discord messages.
Shell companies in Great Britain, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were used in dealing with the Canadian and American companies that actually owned the production company.
The goal of the network was apparently to help spread political discord and damage US opposition to Russia.
"While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the government of Russia's interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine," the indictment says.
Southern grew up in the Surrey area, before running for election in 2015.
