According to the accusations, he was involved in the actions of an extremist organization as well as the recruitment process for the same.

He confessed his guilt and gave testimony against the "co-conspirators" in their conspiracy to sell queer literature. His case will be heard using the simplified procedure in the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow. The beginning of his trial saw the request by the defense for the trial to be transferred into a closed courtroom, which the court rejected.

Vakhlyayev, along with Pavel Ivanov, the ex-Popcorn Books Sales Director and Dmitry Protopopov, who is one of the heads of Popcorn Books and Individuum, was arrested in May 2025 and spent around a year in house arrest under activity restrictions.

In the version of the prosecution, in December 2023 - following the ban imposed on Russia by the "international LGBT movement" which does not exist - the accused decided to get rid of the "banned" books, which they still had in their warehouses. According to the prosecution, an "organized group" at Eksmo tried to engage children into the "LGBT movement". Evidence of book sales to underage girls is presented in the case; one of them later turned out to be from a controlled purchase.

It is believed that Vakhlyayev was responsible for the delivery process, order execution, etc.

Vakhlyayev refused to provide testimony in detail.

According to records of his interrogation, the "red" list of books which are already banned in Russia and "yellow" - of the ones which can cause any questions, were compiled in June 2023 by the chief editor of Popcorn Books Satenik Anastasyan.

According to Vakhlyayev, the idea to re-register some of the books and sell them covertly came up from Alexandra Shipetina, a top Eksmo-AST manager and the director of Individuum Print. Also Vakhlyayev mentioned Eksmo CEO Yevgeny Kapyev, Eksmo director for distribution Anatoly Norovyatkin and RDTs-Almaty director Ivan Basharatyan among the book sellers.

The former sales director of Popcorn Books, Ivanov, was already sentenced for four years in suspended prison time. Moreover, he made a deal with investigators and became an informer against other defendants. Ivanov claimed in the court that "I always fought against [LGBT], since Soviet Union times when I caught perverts being a Komsomol patrol."

This lawsuit involving Ivanov and Vakhlyayev is widely mentioned in press under the name "case of book publishers." In April 2026, some Eksmo executives were arrested in the course of this case; one of them was Kapyev. The arrestees were soon set free after interrogations. According to Russian media and their sources, Protopopov, Vakhlyayev, and Ivanov testified against top management of Eksmo.