A Belarusian model who claimed last year that she had evidence of Russian interference in the election of Donald Trump has been arrested upon her arrival in Moscow following deportation from Thailand.

Moscow police said in a statement that Anastasia Vashukevich was detained on Thursday in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on charges of inducement to prostitution along with three people deported alongside her.

Vashukevich, who has been in a Thai prison since February last year, was given a suspended sentence on Tuesday and ordered to be deported after she pleaded guilty to soliciting and conspiracy along with several co-defendants in a case related to holding a “sex training” seminar.

Vashukevich, also known on social media as Nastya Rybka, earlier claimed to have recordings of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska talking about interference in the 2016 US election, but never released them.

Deripaska is close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and had a working relationship with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager who was investigated by the special counsel Robert Mueller and convicted last year of tax and bank fraud.

Russian news agencies said that four of the seven people deported from Thailand who arrived in Moscow on Thursday were detained, including Vashukevich and a work partner, Alexander Kirillov. They may face up to six years in prison if convicted on charges of inducement to prostitution.

While in detention in Thailand, the group sent a note to the US embassy via an intermediary seeking help and political asylum. Vashukevich indicated she would turn over the recordings she claimed to have if the US could help secure her release, but she later withdrew the offer, suggesting that she and Deripaska had reached an agreement.

A public scandal erupted in February last year when the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, published an investigation drawing on Vashukevich’s social media posts suggesting corrupt links between Deripaska and a top Kremlin official, the deputy prime minister, Sergei Prikhodko. The investigative report featured video from Deripaska’s yacht in 2016, when Vashukevich, who worked as an escort, was aboard.

Deripaska has not disputed that the meeting on the yacht with Prikhodko took place, but denied the allegations of bribery and said Navalny’s investigation was part of a planned campaign to damage his reputation.

On Wednesday, the US Senate narrowly upheld a Treasury department decision to lift sanctions from three companies connected to Deripaska.

The Treasury department said the Russian companies had committed to separating from Deripaska, who would remain blacklisted as part of an array of measures targeting tycoons close to the Kremlin.

The US have imposed sanctions on 24 Russian officials and tycoons as Washington stepped up its condemnation of Russia’s actions in recent years, including its 2014 annexation of Crimea, support for the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, hacking attacks and meddling in Western elections.