Greetings! On Sunday, November 8, Ernest Mezak, a lawyer for the Public Verdict Foundation, publicly accused Pavel Andreev, the CEO of the 7x7 Online Newspaper, of unethical behavior towards a young woman named Anastasia (he changed the name). According to him, Anastasia claimed "harassment by Pavel Andreev". We, the team of the 7x7 Online Newspaper, want to inform our readers and partners about how we decided to respond to the public accusations against our colleague.
Pavel Andreev has been on a week's leave since November 9. This was his decision, and in the meantime, the team will hopefully be able to decide how to respond to the situation correctly. We rely on the assistance of an expert council that we are going to call with the help of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a partner of the Femfest in Syktyvkar.
We do not consider what happened to be the issue of harassment in the editorial team of 7x7: the young woman has never been an employee, job applicant, or volunteer of the online newspaper, has never had any financial commitments with the editorial team, has never been Pavel Andreev's colleague or subordinate. 7x7’s editorial team has had a mediation board for several years, which handles conflicts and complaints of employees at their request. It has never received any reports of sexual abuse in the team by anyone.
We will report the results of the expert council's work to our readers and partners. Thank you for worrying about us!
