Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images These entities are reportedly operating nine Telegram channels with more than five million subscribers to whom they were making recommendations on selected listed scrips. Such recommendations induced the investors to deal in the said scrips, thereby creating artificial volume and price rise. Telegram was co-founded by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, the brothers who had previously created VKontakte. VK is Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, a social network used for public and private messaging, audio and video sharing as well as online gaming. In January, SimpleWeb reported that VK was Russia’s fourth most-visited website, after Yandex, YouTube and Google’s Russian-language homepage. In 2016, Forbes’ Michael Solomon described Pavel Durov (pictured, below) as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia.” Sebi said data, emails and other documents are being retrieved from the seized devices and detailed investigation is in progress. The perpetrators use various names to carry out the investment scams. They may also impersonate or clone licensed capital market intermediaries by using the names, logos, credentials, websites and other details of the legitimate entities to promote the illegal schemes.
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