Alexei Navalny on the program “Where’s the Money?” on “Navalny LIVE”

[music]

Hello everyone, and as tradition dictates, a special

good evening to our viewers in Siberia and

the Russian Far East, for whose sake we moved

this slot to 4:00 p.m. Moscow time

You’re watching the Navalny Live channel

where they always tell the truth. Only

the truth, nothing but the truth. And this is the most

fashionable economics show in the country

called Where’s the Money? I’m your host,

Vladimir Milov. And today we have an

unexpected guest. This is not a mirage, not editing,

and you’re not hallucinating: this is the future president

of the Russian Federation, Alexei Navalny.

Bonjour! Hi, Volodya, thanks so much for

inviting me. It really is not just the most stylish

but also the most useful and genuinely

interesting economics show. We’re

very grateful that you host it on

the Navalny Live channel. Thank you. We

try to explain in plain language

to many people in our country the truth about

the economy that they won’t hear on

television. And Alexei and I agreed

that he would come to us today because

there were a lot of requests to clarify many

aspects of his presidential economic program.

I think the best way to do that

is directly, with the man himself

here in the studio. But I’d still like to

start

with the story of the week: Usmanov. Yes, everyone

who still hasn’t watched Alexei’s video

responding to Usmanov, in detail about

the origins of all his wealth and

so on—if you haven’t seen it, there’s a link

in the description of our broadcast. But I think

many people have watched it, and it seems to me

that it’s always very important to emphasize this

main point, which has really

been overlooked: how he earned

his initial capital—essentially

by taking Gazprom’s metallurgical

assets. Frankly, as a

way of introduction, I can say that I remember in

government that moment when they so

completely changed their tune midair. Just the day before

they were saying, “Look how great we are,”

“we consolidated these metallurgical

assets that someone had identified,” and so

on—almost handing out awards, practically

to Usmanov. It was very interesting in court

because we had named you as a witness, and they

were practically twisting themselves into knots: “No, dear, that’s impossible.” But he

“had absolutely nothing to do with it, he knows

nothing, he was in the tariff system, he had no

connection to Gazprom.” But we

know that he did have a connection—not only did he,

and since 1997 I’ve

personally handled many issues

related to Gazprom. So the way they

changed their tune midair—yes, right then and there

literally, when the decision was made to hand all this

over to Usmanov, they started saying it was

“non-core assets, we don’t need them,”

“we’re just getting rid of some

junk,” and so on. I dug up an

interesting article—an interview with

Usmanov himself from March 2002 in Vedomosti

There it is on the screen, please. Yes,

and this first slide is actually its

title, and you can find it—the link is

in the description to our video. But here’s the most

interesting part—I selected the next excerpt,

the one underlined in red. Yes, when

he is asked directly: “With what money

did you buy it, and why didn’t you hold

a tender?” And he says, “I’m not going to tell you

anything. What kind of tender could there be when I

was a minority shareholder there and had

preemptive rights?” So this is

absolutely—well, it’s much worse than

the loans-for-shares auctions, of course. And that’s exactly

why they were so worried about

the release of our second video, because

from those British documents we had already established everything:

the guy first, using

Gazprom’s money, bought himself out from himself,

then with Gazprom’s money bought up more,

and then simply sold it to himself again, only

cheaper. In plain terms, he just robbed Gazprom.

Yes—he headed both Gazprom’s

subsidiary that held those shares and his own

private company to which they were transferred. So

I’d really like to see that contract.

There must have been two Usmanovs there, one selling to the other

to himself—that’s exactly what it looks like.

That’s precisely why they were categorically

against calling you as a witness,

categorically against obtaining

documents from Gazprom, because this is—

you’re absolutely right, and you put it well—this is

worse than the loans-for-shares auctions. The loans-for-shares

auctions were, broadly speaking, a sham, but

at least they were legally structured properly and

happened in plain sight—everyone

saw it. But here—here this is simply the most

genuine criminal backroom deal.

Absolutely. I don’t even remember a board

decision at Gazprom on this matter. I

have the impression that Miller personally

signed off on all of this for them. And now let’s

quickly go over just a

couple of current stories. Of course, the main one is

that the St. Petersburg

Economic Forum opens today. Remember, we talked a lot

about the fat-cat economy—that is,

this dozen monopolies

headed or controlled by

people close to the authorities, who

basically suck all the lifeblood out of our

country, while, uh, two-thirds of the population

basically lives in poverty. Yes, today these

fat cats are essentially holding their convention in

St. Petersburg. There are 200 business jets there; I think

the marinas are probably packed with yachts too. But

first of all, I want to brag a little: I

pulled a little dirty trick on them.

sabotage there. And at this forum

are being distributed among the participants

a special issue of Profile magazine

timed to coincide with this forum. And

the editors specifically asked me

to, so to speak, sweeten things a little

for the empire-minded crowd, yes, and to write a long

article, 15,000 characters long, about

how, broadly speaking, this

model of the state

of monopolistic capitalism has gone bankrupt. You

can read that article

definitely, because it lays out a

serious alternative to the current

political model in the form of

demonopolization and competition, which is what we

have been talking about. The link is in the description of our

broadcast and on my website millow.org

It’s posted there — The Elephants of State Capitalism — that’s the

title, you won’t confuse it with anything else. But

just to show you, really,

how completely detached these people are, the ones who

have gathered in St. Petersburg, from real life. Here,

show the next picture. It’s a

snapshot from one of the sessions

run by the Egorov law firm

Buginsky and someone else there. This Egorov

was Putin’s classmate, one of those

people close to the emperor today

Yes. And this is what’s posted on the forum’s website

— I’m not joking — everything written here

is right there now, on the site:

“Recently, enormous work has been carried out

to improve Russia’s legal system.”

Yes, remember what we discussed in

previous programs — about a quarter of a

million new criminal cases a year against

entrepreneurs. Yes, you know — well,

you probably know, because they wrote that

this session is practically being led by Prosecutor General

Chaika, meaning Chaika is speaking

about investment

probably using his own family as an example

to explain it

investment traditions. But this is just one more

reason to understand how much these people

live in some other country. They’ve

walled themselves off on Rublyovka (an elite suburb outside Moscow), on their

yachts, behind barbed wire, from the rest of us. Yes, they

know nothing about the real economy, and

today we’re going to talk precisely about what

is actually happening in the country while

they sit there discussing the opening of escrow

accounts. Yes, I’d put it this way:

better hurry up and open an escrow account before

they jail you for entrepreneurial

activity. That, probably, could

serve as the symbol of this discussion.

I wanted to say that what surprises me most

about this St. Petersburg forum, year

after year — and similar

forums in general — when I look at them, I always

want to ask: guys, who are you

even talking to? Kudrin is always sitting there,

and year after year he says,

“Russia needs reforms.”

“The Russian government is not ready for

reforms.” He’s sitting there — Kudrin is sitting there,

next to him sits Siluanov, over here sits Nabiullina,

and he says the government is not ready for

reforms, and they all nod their heads: yes,

not ready. Who are you talking to? And here,

show the next picture. Yesterday there was also

a sensation, when Vedomosti leaked — not yet

officially published, but drafted by the

Economic Development Ministry — this project. They labored over it,

labored over it. You were asking about the new minister,

Oreshkin, how good he is — well, now you can see

just how good. They came up with a strategy through

2035 saying that incomes

will not grow, pensions will not rise to

a critical level ever, wages

maybe by 2022 — and everyone

should go to the polls and, together, you understand

what to do in a situation like this. Did you

see it? Yes, of course. Frankly, this is

simply, in my view, these people admitting

that they are satisfied with the status quo, that in reality

they do not want to change anything in the system. And I

think we need to take this Vedomosti article

— people in the provinces don’t read it —

and print it out

for people, because

it’s astonishing. I mean, they are simply

saying outright that we

have failed, we have gone bankrupt, we’ve been in power for 18 years

and can’t do anything. Your

incomes do not interest us; we have some other

goals — inflation targeting,

budget rules. I want to say separately about Kudrin.

In fact, this forum

is in many ways Kudrin’s show; he’s the star there

— six appearances in two days — and I’ve

honestly spoken at such conferences

two or three times in a day myself sometimes, and that’s

already a heavy load. And a great many

people pin, in my view rather unjustifiably,

their hopes on this. Because

if you look at what exactly

Kudrin is proposing — you can see a couple of slides about

him — it is, first, a reduction in

social spending, and second, unfortunately,

an increase in the retirement

age. I wanted to talk with you specifically

about this topic. In my view,

implementing his ideas will lead to even greater

social tension

and, overall, the situation — in my view, we

know that demand in our economy is flat on the floor

and because of that the economy is stagnant. I don’t know, everyone

seems to hope that now, instead of

someone else, Kudrin will come in. What do you think

about that? It’s an astonishing situation

in which raising the retirement

age is being sold to all of us, and in many ways

has already been sold to the public and

to the democratic-minded part of society, as

some kind of panacea. So, what we need

you support raising the retirement age

somewhere out in the regions, people come up and say

Well, Alexei, there’s no alternative, is there?

to raising the retirement age. But why?

No. In fact, this is an absolutely harmful

and absolutely immoral measure right now, but

Let’s look at life expectancy

in Russia. Please bring up chart number nine

if you can. Yes, here we have a chart

showing the specific gap with Western countries

in life expectancy. So how can you

raise the retirement age? We would

literally push it to a threshold that

men in Russia simply do not

live to reach. And if they do, they are already

seriously ill people who simply can’t work. So

if possible, the next slide as well. I

keep talking about this issue, which

supporters of raising the retirement

age try to keep tucked away

somewhere out of sight. But in reality, here are

studies by people who worked on

the system. They show that already at

pre-retirement age, well,

most people suffer from chronic

illnesses and are in a position to qualify

for disability pensions. It seems to me

this is simply deception. I mean, we’re just not

ready for this. Half, or even two

thirds of the people who fall under

the increase will immediately go onto

disability. They may be working now, but

first of all, they can’t actually work

But look at detection rates. I don’t know,

for cancer, for example. In the West

if a person is diagnosed with cancer, they are

treated and then go back to work. Here, when

cancer is detected, all that remains is

to save the person’s life, certify them as

disabled, and that’s it—they simply live out the rest of their days

So with our level of healthcare

this is simply not even feasible. The problem

with the pension system is that

people are simply already sick by retirement

age, and the fact that in our country early

retirement is taken by nearly 30% of people

I’m 40 years old. All my former classmates

became military personnel or police officers or

something like that—coming from a military town, they

are already pensioners now, or they stay in service

solely because they’re waiting for housing

We have a huge number of people retiring

early, so the things being proposed to them

are, in principle, not even

workable. It’s simply a deception. And in fact

it won’t be possible, through all this,

to save money unless before that we

make some serious efforts to

improve the population’s health. And I

would also like to add, by the way, that our, uh,

supporters of raising the retirement

age always say: yes, our

life expectancy is low, but

conditional survival after a certain age is high. That is, if you

make it to 60, you’ll live another 12 years or so

right

But once again, colleagues, I want you to

understand that we are emphasizing that people

who live to the current

retirement age are already not in

a condition to work. These tens of

millions of healthy, uh, people ready to

keep working in their sixties, as

in the West—we simply imagine them

in our heads, as if there were some kind of

sprightly European pensioners

who are basically still young people. But look at

our country, especially in industrial cities

Take somewhere like Chelyabinsk, with its

staggering rates of illness, and

similar cities: at 60, a person, well,

tell them to keep working—they simply

cannot work in principle. They have a

medical file this thick

So first healthcare, and only then

later can we start

talking about the retirement age. This is

not even an issue for the next

decade or so. And most importantly, they are all

looking for money for the budget, for

the pension system, and they say: well, here is

the only source—people. Let’s

take even more from these people and

make them work longer. And somehow

for some reason, no one in the government

ever thinks to

turn around a little and see the wonderful

Gazproms, Rosnefts, Transnefts, and all the

rest. There it is—the money that

could be directed into the pension system

So, please show slide number 12 on, uh,

oil and gas revenues and what we

propose doing to replenish the

fund. This is, in my view, a fairly

clear and understandable chart. Everything

at the bottom there—the dark blue, red, and

brown sections—yes, that is what is already

built into the current budget in the form of

oil and gas revenues. Taking into account the rise

in prices, this already basically covers

the volume of insurance contributions collected from

businesses. That is, it’s somewhere around 5

to 5.5 trillion rubles. And the rest of the

pension fund budget is simply

subsidized by the federal budget. Yes, but

if we do what we are proposing

to collect proper dividends from

state-owned companies and raise taxes on Gazprom

which pays only about $20

per 1,000 cubic meters. Yes, now show

the next slide about, about dividends

from state-owned companies. We decided to make you

a breakdown. Right, you were on

various committees, boards of directors’ representatives

Yes, you worked a lot, a lot with all of them

you sued them over disclosures, yes, all those disclosures

fought to make sure they at least

showed where they were spending billions, but

even the same Transneft

billions of rubles spent on who-knows-what

some unknown "gratitude," kept secret

secrets, even though economically

they refuse to disclose where they are putting

all these charitable donations

and overall they have enormous operating

profit, while at Transneft, as for dividends, they

pay next to nothing a year, and overall, well

look, a lot of people have even told me—we discussed this

idea in previous programs

they ask: well, what if they don't have

that kind of profit right now? Well, guys, then costs need

to be cut. But at Gazprom, I told you

how 15 years ago they had

a workforce of 300,000 people. Now it's 465,000

yes, even though production has fallen by more than

20%, and labor costs are

a key line item there, the second largest

category of their expenses, yes—raw materials and supplies

Well then, let's take your kickback economy

and comb through it—we'll hold competitive tenders for

procurement there, and so on. This is actually

easier to do, easier to administer

than if we now start changing the retirement

age and discover that, first of all, everyone is

sick, and second, everyone qualifies for early retirement

they don't want to, they can't, and there will be

enormous fraud and scandals because of

these commissions that determine

whether someone is disabled or not. We won't make any money

from this at all. It's important

to understand this: when we're told

that refusing to raise the retirement

age is populism, that's a complete lie

an absolute lie. What is populism is saying

that the retirement age must be raised

while leaving Rosneft

and Gazprom alone because they're supposedly poor

and miserable and nothing can be taken from them. Besides,

this is, in principle, a global trend: people

work less now. We can see

that in Scandinavian countries they are reducing working hours

and introducing, uh,

an extra day off on Fridays. What needs to be increased is

labor productivity. We need to

stop forcing these millions of people with

low productivity

to work for miserable

wages so that they can solve

the problems of Putin's economy, and

just imagine this: let the guys from

the ACF, for example, comb through all

the procurement at Gazprom. Alexei really

is a shareholder in all these companies, he

also knows this whole internal

kitchen very well. I can assure you, as someone

who has dealt with Gazprom all my life,

there is plenty of profit there—it is just

channeled out into all sorts of affiliated

companies and then turns into yachts through

state procurement schemes. Let's just look at it—after all,

even Medvedev admits it's a trillion rubles a year

in procurement in state monopolies; in reality it's much

more—around five trillion rubles

Even if we can't, the very next day, save all

these 5 trillion for ourselves, well

a couple trillion from these state procurements could

be returned to the economy fairly quickly. And

also, so that you understand, show slide

number fourteen about Bashneft—this is

a fresh example. As soon as Sechin

grabbed Bashneft, remember how last autumn

Misha Leontyev was telling us about

synergy

yes, how wonderfully everything would work now

As for dividends—nothing. Bashneft, in which

the state was a shareholder, used to pay

the biggest single dividend payments in

the sector—20 billion rubles a year, yes, and that

largely went into the budget. Now

it's zero, nothing. And so

on the previous slide—bring back the one about

the overall table—you can see Rosneft there, well

there's a zero sitting there. Yes, that's exactly what we were

talking about: Rosneftegaz

wants to book a paper loss for itself and

not pay anything into the budget at all. And all of this

is really slowly moving toward being shifted

onto

pensioners—forcing them to work and

dumping the financing burden onto them

Why are you absolutely right to keep talking

about demonopolization? Well, because

this state devours everything

There was Bashneft, which paid normal

taxes. No—Rosneft swallowed it up, and now

together they don't pay taxes. But here is

the money—it's there right now, it can be

taken

from us right now, before our very eyes. This

has all been in the headlines in recent weeks

Gazprom has been exempted from obligations

Bashneft now simply—and in fact even

doesn't hesitate to do it either

completely openly, and they also openly

tell us outright: well, guys, it's impossible not to

raise the retirement age. No, that

isn't true—there is an alternative, and that is my

alternative, it's obvious. You know, I wanted

to ask a somewhat philosophical question here. I

also feel that maybe this is some kind of

bacillus left over from the market reformers

of the first wave: as soon as you start

talking to people about some kind of

responsibility or social policy

everyone immediately bristles

and says, "that's populism." What do we do about that? That's

exactly how it is, because where did

Russian economists even come from—these people who

call themselves economists? Well, once upon a time

back then

in the 1980s there really was

a grand confrontation between

the red directors and the communists

and the people who called themselves market reformers

and, uh, the Soviet Union was collapsing—it

was collapsing as an impoverished country, and back then any

The word "social," of course,

used to be met with hostility, because back then

anything social was seen as the enemy. We

were supposed to be 100% free-market believers.

We were supposed to fully embrace

paid education, paid

healthcare. Anywhere the word

"social" appeared, it meant the enemy. Well, that was the spirit of the time

back then, but now, thank God,

more than 20 years have passed—almost 30 years, in fact.

It is high time to get rid of that mindset and

stop reacting with hostility and start accepting any

normal social idea that

has been implemented in perfectly successful

capitalist countries. All of this

exists in Western Europe, but even now

here in Russia

it is still considered good form among people

who call themselves economists: wherever

they hear the word "social," they immediately say

"populism." Like parrots: populism, this is

impossible, that's populism. Let's

raise the retirement age—that's not

populism. Anywhere people have to pay, that's

good. Anywhere we try to get something out of

the state or a state-owned company

that's bad. I wanted to remind you

of our discussion about the retirement age and

stress once again that this idea—that

you can supposedly cast off social

spending, throw people into poverty, and everything

will somehow turn out fine—is an absolutely harmful idea.

Because it does not pay off economically,

because you create a huge

number of destitute people with no prospects,

who are, understandably, angry. Yes, they are prone

to all sorts of things—to vote for

populists, or, who knows, to engage in other

actions that, to put it mildly,

may have an anti-modernization character.

It's just that we don't... You see, our

main problem in the economy right now is

a lack of demand and consumers whose purchasing power has collapsed.

In other words, we cannot restart our

market. With an impoverished population, there will be no

economic growth. So this is simply

a matter of normal responsibility.

You talk to an entrepreneur somewhere in

Barnaul and ask, "How's business going?"

And he says, "What kind of business can I

possibly have if everyone here earns 12,000

rubles a month? What can I sell them?

Nothing." And then someone writes in from Vladimir Region:

unemployment benefits there range from 800 to

4,900 rubles a month, while the subsistence minimum

is around 9,000 rubles—at least twice as much.

At least twice as much. I wanted to talk about the minimum wage here.

This is basically the main issue.

These so-called textbook liberals have made it their main

theme, the main target they have chosen,

namely the minimum wage. And by the way,

you know, show this here,

this little chart. First of all, let's

remind ourselves how much people here actually

earn. It's image number 15; it was shown

in one of the previous programs. These are

Rosstat data, and it shows very clearly

that half the population lives

on a salary of less than 25,000 rubles a month. And in fact,

it's actually even worse—the breakdown shows that

most people live on even less. And these are all

official figures. If we look at the

informal sector, wages there are lower,

so the whole picture shifts downward, of course.

And look: more than 80

percent of the population earns less than 50,000

rubles a month. So really, how

do we expect to generate any kind of growth,

to create any demand for goods,

with labor in Russia paid so poorly?

Especially considering that, as we were saying with

Vlad Zhukovsky—if you saw the previous

program—one of the key problems

in, say, skilled

high-tech sectors is

a labor shortage. Because people who are

educated and qualified are not willing

to work for such wages. And so I wanted

to show once again

the next slide—yes, the one about the minimum wage—to show that

people are being scared with dire

warnings about 25,000 rubles, but

look at how much, right now,

an employer is actually paying, taking into account

the current 30 percent payroll contributions.

And if those were hypothetically abolished,

then a 25,000-ruble wage would in fact be

less than, say, today's

20,000-ruble wage, effectively speaking. And this is

a very important slide, because you are absolutely right

when you say that the proposal drawing the most

criticism is precisely our proposal to raise

the minimum wage to 25,000

rubles. The moment you say it—good Lord—every

cliché starts spinning: the inflation spiral, you

want to hand out money left and right,

and all the rest of it. But that is complete

nonsense. These are the same people who

lecture us about an inflation spiral

while having no objection whatsoever to

state monopolies, or monopolies in general,

including utility monopolies, raising their tariffs.

They say tariffs have to go up because infrastructure wears out

and resources are depleted—but that is actually the biggest

contributor to inflation. Inflation in Russia is what it is

because monopolies endlessly

raise their prices. The inflationary impact of

raising wages would be far,

far smaller. And most importantly,

the only—if you could show

the slide again now—the one about wages

and taxes, yes, that one—

the only rational argument is about

how difficult it would be for entrepreneurs,

especially small businesses, to pay higher

wages. Well, our proposal addresses

that problem for small business owners.

As things stand, small entrepreneurs are being crushed altogether.

People don’t pay payroll taxes and don’t

receive official, fully declared salaries because

it’s impossible to pay them — the sheer absurdity

of these taxes is outrageous. If we especially

cut them on minimum wages, then these

social contributions — entrepreneurs would, without

any problem, pay those wages officially. I

wanted to emphasize this again in connection

with one important current story. So,

show slide number seventeen. We

have heard in the news in recent days that

new Russian civilian aircraft have been sent on

test flights — the MC-21.

Honestly, I’ll say this: even though this

aircraft surely has a lot of problems, yes, but

it’s still a good thing. This is exactly the kind of thing we want

to see developed — these kinds of industries

in our country. Now, on the next slide,

if you look at the company’s financial statements

for Irkut — that is, the Irkutsk aircraft plant

that will produce this aircraft —

yes, on the next slide you can see that it

pays into the social funds an amount three times

larger — these social fund contributions are three times

greater than its net profit. Yes, Zhukovsky and I

have talked in previous programs

a lot about how much this

burden — the tax burden on

payroll funds — very seriously

hinders the development of such

high-tech industries. Here is

an example with this aircraft. In principle,

it’s a good thing that Russia produces

civilian aircraft, right? But this

tax simply devours everything and makes it

unprofitable. They need to produce

several hundred more planes in order

to make it profitable, simply

because of payroll taxes like these. This issue also

hits close to home for me. Here at the

Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), we pay

exclusively official, fully declared salaries, but we

have no other option, for obvious

reasons. And in order to pay a person

anything at all, I also have to send

a pile of money into these

funds. We can afford it because

our source of money is simple: people

just give us money. But if this were

some competitive business, where

my main costs were precisely

people’s salaries, I would have gone bankrupt long ago.

Yes, it simply couldn’t exist at all.

Once again, bring back slide number 12. Everyone

who is now going to tell us,

the moment we say this, “Oh, how are you then

going to finance contributions to

the Pension Fund?” — slide number 12, here is

how contributions to the Pension Fund are formed.

We have perfectly sufficient oil and gas revenues —

more than enough today

to increase pensions by a third, not

like Kudrin says: “Let’s

cut things, raise the retirement age, and

then maybe there will be a possibility to raise pensions.”

No — all of this can be done already today.

We’ve just explained to you how

easily this can be done. There is no need

to invent anything here: these oil and gas

revenues should be working for pensioners.

You know why they say this? It seems to me

— going back to that point about

how it’s unclear who exactly they’re explaining all this

to — because they sit there at their

St. Petersburg forums, and overall, I think

they understand quite well everything we’re

talking about, and of course they would agree with us, but

they just don’t want to notice the elephant in the room.

And that elephant is called Vladimir Putin.

Vladimirovich. If you want to say anything at all

here about how

Russia should be reformed, about who is obstructing

reforms — Kudrin, Siluanov, Nabiullina —

they should simply say in unison:

“Nothing works here because

the same people have been in power for 18 years and want

another 12, and they will never

cut Gazprom’s costs because

they profit from them — they

simply make money off them. And so,

in order not to touch these things that are unpleasant

for Putin, they come up with: ‘Let’s

raise the retirement age. Let’s

shift healthcare costs — all of this — onto

us, because all these Timchenkos and

Rotenbergs don’t want to pay

for the full inefficiency of this system.’ So,

we’ll get to them in a moment, by the way. Another

question I wanted to ask you is

the environment. Yes, your program doesn’t

say all that much about it directly, but people

are asking about it a lot, accordingly,

especially after you spoke at the

rally in Chelyabinsk in April against

the Tominsky GOK (mining and processing plant). It’s an important issue; it also

came up actively in protests. If

we can, let’s watch a clip with

fragments of your speech in

Chelyabinsk.

so that on your land they build things that

will

Do you want yet another oligarch

to profit at the expense of your health?

Please tell me,

are the taxes they

will pay worth your children’s health? No.

The city of Chelyabinsk must say to all

politicians — to me, to Putin, to Zhirinovsky,

to Zyuganov, to anyone — that we will support

only those who are against the GOK, right?

We will oppose everyone who is for the GOK, right? And

then politicians themselves will come here to you, onto

this stage. I came, and everyone else

must come here too and say what they

think about the GOK. Everyone must come

here and say what they think about

the level of cancer rates in

Chelyabinsk.

If someone tells us, “Thank you, well done,”

if someone tells us that this mining

and processing plant

will bring a high standard of living and prosperity—well,

show me even one city in Russia

where there is a mining and processing plant and there is prosperity,

are there any such cities?

Unfortunately,

all the cities that have, or are surrounded by,

mining and processing plants are,

first, poor, and second, everyone is sick.

Life expectancy is low, and there’s no money.

That’s what a mining and processing

plant is. To wrap up my remarks, I

want to say something that seems to me

obvious, but our authorities do not

understand: it is not oil or gas that bring money, but

people. No matter how much oil and gas

or ore you extract, if your people are sick, if

by age 30 everyone has cancer

or if children have childhood

respiratory illnesses—you cannot profit from that.

You cannot make money by selling off the health

of your citizens. Chelyabinsk,

support those politicians who are against

the plant, against any similar projects, against anything like this. Let

the whole city say that not a single

politician who supports this plant

will get a single vote here, right?

Thank you very much. I’m very glad, thank you

to the organizers for the opportunity to speak

here. Thank you.

[applause]

Well done.

Well, look, here’s one of those

popular attacks on you: they say,

“So what, are you against jobs

or something? You’ve also gotten into

environmental issues—this is just populism.” Respond to

that. It’s an absolutely rational position. I

have heard these reproaches: so you’re ready

to appear at any protest rally

because you just want to get

cheap sympathy. But my position is

absolutely rational: it is

unprofitable—not for people, not for the budget. But if

we look at the actual number of

jobs that this enterprise

will create, it is not that large on the scale

of Chelyabinsk, certainly. And this is

an insignificant number of jobs.

From the track record of such enterprises, we see

that wages are low. But, for example,

this particular plant affects the city’s water

intake, and one million people will

be poisoned a little bit. Here, show

slide nineteen—yes, yes, a little bit.

A million people will be poisoned a little bit,

and children will get sick a little more often.

There will be an increase in respiratory illnesses, an increase

in allergies and everything else. So I

simply see from the actual numbers that

residents, specifically in Chelyabinsk, will

spend more on medicines over a couple of years

than the budget will collect. In the end,

what happens is that the owner of the enterprise

will indeed make several

hundred million dollars. Yes, he will be

just fine, but overall the region

will have to spend several times more on healthcare

in order to

treat these people, because new problems will arise.

New treatment facilities will have to be built

for this more contaminated

water intake. More money will have to be spent

on treating children. More will have to be paid

in sick leave benefits to those people who

will stay home with these children and care for them,

and so on and so forth. You need to look

at all of this as a whole. Therefore,

my position is absolutely rational.

These harmful enterprises,

which are also uncontrolled, should not

be exempt from accountability. No one can insure against them,

no one can properly inspect them, and there is no

public oversight that can

go in, conduct a real assessment, and

sue them over poisoned water. That simply

does not happen. That is exactly why this is

simply unprofitable for Russia, because

sick people cost the economy and the budget

far, far more than

the budget will earn from this particular

harmful enterprise. You saw the screenshot:

this article is not from some kind of

opposition

democratic outlet, but from the most

pro-Kremlin Ural publication that

smears us as State Department agents and so

on. But they live there, you understand, they live there.

They wrote about how businesspeople are massively

preparing to leave Chelyabinsk precisely because of

this whole outlook. And the last

environmental story I wanted

to briefly cover—and then we’ll probably let Alexei go—is

this story

about our friend Rotenberg, and I mean

the younger one, yes. So he

picked up an asset called

the National Antimony

Company, if I’m not mistaken, and they

want to build in Asbest, 90 km (about 56 miles) from

Yekaterinburg, an extremely harmful

antimony production facility, very environmentally

hazardous. They will probably also talk about jobs—

140 jobs. That is, any

shopping mall creates more than 140 jobs. That is

basically nothing. And you’re right: they are

low-paid, and at the same time this is a very

harmful industry.

A toxic one, yes, yes. And on top of that, it is all

being pushed through, as always, without

proper hearings, without anything—simply

by brute force and administrative pressure. Naturally, they

will violate environmental standards there for profit.

What else would you expect from Rotenberg?

And now I would like to

show you an appeal from Natasha Krylova.

a deputy of the City Duma of the urban

district of Asbest, who is fighting this there almost single-handedly

project. So, let's

listen to what she says, and then we'll probably let Alexei go

at that point. Thank you

very much, yes.

Our city has come out against Rotenberg's plant

for the production of antimony and

cyanide gold leaching. We do not

need this kind of investment from an oligarch.

For decades, various enterprises in the city

have been destroyed. Last autumn,

the brick factory owned by

a State Duma deputy from United Russia

was shut down, and 200 people were thrown out onto the street.

Right now, a private

pig-breeding complex is closing; thousands of head of elite

animals will be slaughtered, and 80

workers will be laid off. Nobody cares.

But meanwhile, the opening here of Rotenberg's chemical

plant is being aggressively pushed through

by authorities at every level, and presented to us

like some kind of carrot on a string.

They promise to create, what, 40 jobs.

Public opinion is unequivocally against it.

People are being silenced; the problem is being hushed up.

On March 25,

a rally was held attended by up to a third of the population, but the media

did not cover these events at all. A petition to the president

was signed by 13,000

people, and there has been no result there either. In the

presidential administration, they put

the popular initiative on the back burner

and instructed the government

of Sverdlovsk Region, headed by

Governor Kuyvashev, a supporter of

Rotenberg. It's absurd. We are continuing our work

and fighting on. We created an initiative

group that registered with

the city's election commission, and now

we are pushing for a citywide

popular referendum. So

that's the issue.

Once again, let's thank Alexei

Navalny for finding the time to stop by today.

He has a ton of things going on there, with

the regional headquarters, with the Moscow

rally on June 12 — by the way, everyone should come to it —

and with a mass of other things

like anti-corruption investigations,

Usmanov, and so on. But I think it's very

important that he get more actively involved

precisely in this economic discussion,

because, as you know, right now there are a lot

of stupid voices saying

that Navalny supposedly has no program.

Yes, maybe some of us have

heard some recent remarks of that kind,

and then some kind of

complete nonsense starts, that he

is supposed to speak in detail about interbudgetary

relations. Listen, two years

ago, when we had the

Democratic Coalition in the regional

elections, we published a detailed paper

on what we want and how we see

the redistribution of tax revenues

from the center to the regions — that we want to give

the regions half of VAT and most of the

alcohol and tobacco excise taxes, and so on.

Yes, all of this has been published. If you

haven't seen it, that's your problem. I mean

first and foremost the gentlemen critics

who go around saying supposedly

that there is no program. But if our dear

viewers haven't seen these things, then once

again, write to me privately. You can find

a lot of this on my website,

millov.org, in the Programmatic

Documents section. We have a lot of concrete

material, and Alexei Navalny also has

a special section in his program

that is specifically devoted to the idea that not

everything should be decided in Moscow, and which

among other things envisions a substantial

transfer of money and powers to the regions and

municipalities. We'll be happy to tell you about it.

And once again, you know that

many of our viewers — I receive hundreds

of letters every time after each

program — and I try to answer most of them.

Write to me if you have

any questions on this topic. I will give you

all the links on whatever specific

sections interest you. A lot has already

been said, a lot has been written, and this idea

that we supposedly have no program is all

of course complete nonsense. You know, I wanted

to talk in a bit more detail

about this overall

picture with the St. Petersburg Economic

Forum and the alternative that we

are presenting, you know, now of course

Well, we've already briefly spoken about

Kudrin; there are many questions about his

presence there. Very many people think

that Kudrin's program will be some kind of

panacea for our current situation.

Besides that, there is supposed to be some kind of

debate with Boris Titov's program,

who is speaking there on behalf of, I don't even

know, the Stolypin Club or someone else.

Yes, I assume they have

some kind of debate on this topic at the

St. Petersburg forum. So now I'll

explain to you why all of this is, in general,

interesting, but not very serious

when applied to our reality. In our

reality — show that image again about

the elephants of state capitalism, definitely —

read this article of mine

which is being handed out right now at this forum in

Profile magazine. We have built

a system that has tied our hands

and feet and does not let anyone move

forward — a system of monopolistic

state capitalism built on the complete

dominance of a certain handful of these

in structures close to the emperor and his

relatives, and so on. There, the youngest

billionaire, Shamalov, all these

Timchenkos and Rotenbergs, the Usmanovs, and the rest.

So, this article explains in detail

that as long as we have this

structure in place, we are not going

to get anywhere, no matter what we do. And we've often

said here on the program that

what is needed is demonopolization and the development of

competition. The last one there, slide 23, is

our joint report from last year

with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which we

prepared on how to demonopolize

the key sectors of our economy. Look for

it, read it, it's easy to find on

my website, millov.org. So, none of

them—not Kudrin, not Gref, and certainly not

the government—say anything

about this. And you see, a strange kind of

situation is taking shape: when they have

this huge plenary hall, and in essence

there is this dead

decomposing giant elephant lying there, which not only

takes up a lot of space, but also

doesn't exactly freshen the air. But they all pretend

that there is no elephant there at all. And that

instead, let's arrange something in a corner—

here we'll make a little kitchen, here we'll

make a little bedroom. Titov proposes

printing money so that everyone gets

access to cheap money—but what exactly

would that solve if all these monopolies stand

like a wall of barriers in the way of developing

normal competitive business and

won't let anyone do anything? Yes, exactly

the same with Kudrin. They can

debate as much as they like, but no real

discussion will come of it, because he no longer

says anything about it. He speaks very

favorably, uh, in general about this

economy of somewhat larger

national champions. Now, show

slide eight.

About roads: one of the problems we

keep talking about—and by the way, Navalny

wrote a lot about this—is competition

in road construction contracts.

550 billion rubles (about $8.5 billion), 550 billion

rubles—that is roughly the annual budget of the Federal Road

Agency, yes. And at the same time,

look, Dvorkovich admits that

we put into service only 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) of federal

highways per year. That is,

practically nothing. Why does this happen?

Because most of it goes to

repairs, because from the outset they

do poor-quality work. There is no

competition, all the contractors are insiders, everything

has been carved up, they mix sand into

the asphalt, and after a year already

it's impossible to drive on. You know all about our

potholes. So this sector, once again, should be handed

over for an audit to the guys from the ACF and put

it out to open tenders.

Demonopolize it, and it will be a completely

different story. In other words, the money is there—

there is plenty of money for road construction,

there is no need even to squeeze these poor

truck drivers. This whole

Platon system collects, what, 23 billion

rubles (about $355 million) this year versus a 550 billion-ruble budget

for Rosavtodor. I mean, it's nothing, it's

simply useless, what they are doing now

by trying to force them to pay these

Platon fees. The money exists, but

normal development in the road sector is not happening,

because the money is simply being stolen. So when

Navalny and his colleagues from the Anti-Corruption Foundation

say that everything is simply

being looted and that fighting

corruption is the top-priority

task, that is not just a slogan—it is something that

can genuinely solve our problems,

promote infrastructure

development, and ensure that the resources of which

Russia has in abundance actually work for

development rather than

being stuffed into the pockets of these

fat cats who today flew in on their

business jets and yachts to St. Petersburg

for their gathering. But no one there

is talking about this. Today I see

headlines saying Kudrin has come out in favor of

privatizing oil companies.

Excuse me, but here's a very simple

point: four oil companies in Russia

produce three-quarters of the country's oil.

One of them, Rosneft, now produces

more than 40 percent. Frankly, I am

against taking this monopolistic

structure and privatizing it. It was

a state monopoly, and it would become

a monopoly—a private monopoly. In other words, it would be

the same story all over again, just in a different form.

What we need, of course, is a competitive environment. In

America, the largest oil producer

accounts for something like

4%. You can see what a powerful

competitive environment that creates incentives

for innovation—the shale revolution and

the offshore revolution—I mean offshore in the

good sense of the word, offshore marine

extraction. All of this is, in general, the product of

this highly competitive environment that

stimulates innovation. In our case, our environment,

whether you leave it in state hands or

privatize it, being monopolistic,

encourages only theft,

inefficiency, and so on. But neither

Kudrin, nor Titov, nor

the government talk about this. All three of these so-called

alternatives gathered in St. Petersburg

have no intention of hauling this dead elephant out of

the room. Only we can do

that. So watch our channel,

Navalny Live, where they tell the truth about all of this.

Subscribe to our channel and

Be sure to support the presidential

campaign of Alexei Navalny. I wanted

to comment on a few questions

that you’ve been sending in. Of course, there are a lot

of questions about wages, yes, and this is

just a terribly sobering thing—this

article from Vedomosti that we were just

talking about with Alexei, about how

the government has basically admitted that they

have no intention of actually working to

raise our wages. What concerns them is

their own macroeconomic

considerations, while the problems of the impoverished population

that can’t afford anything for itself

to buy simply do not concern them, basically. So,

look, colleagues, please show once again

this graphic about

the ratio of wages to taxes, number 16

here. Right, so once again, many people write to me

saying: you talk about raising wages,

but I...

An entrepreneur writes: I can’t afford

to pay higher wages because of

how high the taxes on them are. Colleagues,

we are proposing—once again, we are proposing

a very clear, very good solution

to this problem: shift the main

burden of funding these social

funds onto state-owned, above all

oil and gas companies. There is enough money there;

we already showed that today

and talked about it in previous broadcasts.

Remove this tax burden, and as a result

if, for example, right now you

are paying an official declared salary of 20,000 rubles, and raise

it to 25,000, under our system you would benefit—you

would have to pay less, because

today you are paying excessive amounts

because of this very high

tax burden. Should

the state be forced to call all taxes

taxes, and not fees,

contributions, and other euphemisms?

Mikhail asks. Colleagues, of course, yes.

In general, you know that in our

Tax Code there is a provision

which says that no one may

be obligated to pay

charges that possess

the characteristics of a tax established by the Code

but are not actually called a tax

and are not provided for in the Code. So,

our state, taking advantage of the fact that

the United Russia party has a constitutional

majority in the Duma (the lower house of parliament), and they essentially

act like one big

rubber stamp: whatever is brought to it from

the government administration, they

just mindlessly stamp through, and there is no

real popular representation in parliament.

That’s why they push through

all sorts of laws that openly

violate the Constitution—the same goes for Platon (Russia’s truck toll system),

which is a pretty obvious case.

It has all the legal

features of a tax, but it is not

called a tax; it is called a contribution

or something like that. At the local level, a whole bunch of such

charges are being introduced, and we know

that, once again, this is a widespread

creeping attempt to shift the burden of the inefficiency

of its own

monopolistic state, which

only extracts resources from us and produces nothing,

onto all of us

who work hard to feed

our families and, among other things, to pay

taxes to the state. Yes, all those who

flew into St. Petersburg today on

business jets and yachts—we are the ones feeding all of them.

It should be the other way around. And, uh,

coming back once again to mining and processing plants and

to the environment—thanks to those who

appreciate that we understand this issue. We will

keep raising the issue of the environment specifically in

economic terms, because it is usually

viewed too simplistically. You know,

they say: investment was brought in,

some kind of raw-materials project was created,

a few jobs were made, and now we extract

profit. But as Alexei said,

this is a very complex

issue, where you have to take into account all

the side effects,

all the consequences for public health.

Well, I don’t know—speaking from my own closely related

professional field, I can tell you this:

in the power sector, just 22 coal-fired

power plants in Russia account for about 40

percent of all harmful emissions

into the atmosphere from Russia’s entire

electric power industry.

Each such facility is a zone

of environmental disaster. Anyone who

lives nearby knows it.

Healthcare costs are enormous.

What’s more, it’s not even just about healthcare

costs, but about the fact that people who

suffer from these various illnesses

cannot work—they lose

their ability to work. That is not very good for the economy either.

And as for jobs,

there just aren’t that many of them at these mining plants.

A thousand jobs? Come on—a megamall

like, I don’t know, Golden Babylon (a shopping mall chain), I

don’t want to advertise it, but any one of them

creates more jobs. So these are not

the kinds of numbers that justify

letting oligarchs push things through there in

violation of all environmental standards. They

push it through using administrative

resources and try as much as possible

to minimize their own costs. In

short, by pushing public opinion aside,

the corresponding measures for

minimizing the impact on the environment

are not carried out by them to the necessary extent. Our

monopolistic state, which

All they care about is oligarchs' profits, that's all.

That's what enables them to do it, so guys, don't

look at

the environmental problem exclusively

through the prism of the accounting of a particular

enterprise: well, it brought in a billion,

created 100 jobs. You have to look

at it as a whole, and these harmful

oligarchic industries operating in a

colonial Third World style are

of course, overall unprofitable for our

state, while the profits go only to

the oligarchs. Vladimir, does it help to spell out

Alexei's program? Look,

here's how we have it structured, so that you

understand.

As for Alexei Navalny's program, it

you know, it was published on the 2018 website

navalny.com, and it's very good. That is,

its framework reflects all the main

topics that should be addressed in terms of

reforms in our state: that money

should go to people, powers and taxes to the regions and

municipalities; enough of deciding everything in

central Moscow; that the state should not

be expanding police-state practices and corrupt

kickback projects, but should spend money on education,

healthcare, and roads — everything that's needed

is there. Now we're going to proceed by way of

maximum detail in developing this program

in specific areas. That is, we won't

change anything there; we'll just publish

detailed road maps on various

important areas. In particular, I

promised in one of the previous

programs a road map for small

business on removing various barriers.

I promise that in the near future we'll have a

program about this, and we'll invite

specific small business owners here,

and we'll talk with them about their problems. This is

one of the important directions, for example,

of our work: trying

to flesh out the things that really

concern people and are important

for the economy. I also see that you're

asking a lot of questions

about various oil and gas issues. I

have a suggestion for you: let's

not touch on them today, because

in a week, on June 8, the well-known

energy expert promised to come to us,

Mikhail Krutikhin. Many of you have long

been asking us to invite him and have long

been waiting. So I've specifically gathered all these

oil and gas topics together, and we'll

discuss all of that there. But

there is one thing I'd like to comment on

separately, and that is yesterday's decision by the

Stockholm arbitration court.

Regarding that lawsuit — I don't even remember anymore who sued

whom, Gazprom or Naftogaz of Ukraine —

a great many people were waiting for this decision, and

the amount of Gazprom's claims against Naftogaz

was astronomical — nearly $35 billion,

and Gazprom lost. That means

Naftogaz doesn't have to pay it anything.

Many people are asking me to comment specifically on

this situation. I want to say that

it does not in itself carry any immediate

consequences, and Gazprom simply wanted

to use this lawsuit to crush

Naftogaz of Ukraine, relying on

a contract that was drawn up in 2009,

back when, if you remember, there was

a three-month gas cutoff, and Prime Minister

Tymoshenko signed all this very quickly,

on the fly, in a rush, just to

immediately

untangle that situation, and after that, let

the chips fall where they may. And by the way, for that

she basically served time in prison.

So the essence of it is that in this

contract there is a so-called take-or-

pay clause.

I'll explain it simply for those who aren't fully

familiar with the subject: basically, a certain

minimum threshold

for gas supply volumes is set, and if the consumer —

in this case, Ukraine — takes

less, saying, well, we don't need

all that, we don't need, say, 50

billion a year, we only need, say, 20, then

it is still considered that it must

pay for 50. I know many of you

are having your hair stand on end right now — how

can that be? But there really is such a

formula in international

long-term gas supply contracts. The explanation

is that the producer has to

invest, accordingly, in

fields and pipeline construction,

and to guarantee those investments, it needs

income guarantees. Therefore, you will pay

for a certain volume regardless of

whether you consumed it or not. That's why

it's called take-or-pay — although if anything,

"pay anyway" would probably be a more accurate

way to put it. And so

Gazprom calculated that Naftogaz had consumed

far less than the threshold that had been

set in the contract, and Gazprom

said: we don't care that

you didn't need Russian gas;

you committed to paying for such-and-such a volume,

so pay in full. And the Stockholm

arbitration court made a rather revolutionary

decision that this clause, in

principle, violates fair competition,

is imposed on the buyer. I think

this will have major long-term

consequences for Gazprom — not immediate ones,

not today; that is, right now no one is going to pay it

anything, yes, but

European gas consumers will, of course,

try as quickly as possible to use this decision

in all of Gazprom's other

European contracts — that's

Beria's formula: one way or another, they paid.

It's all spelled out: they'll take this ruling and

run to court to have it changed everywhere as well

changed.

In the end, I think that after a whole series of

possible court cases, and in some places

voluntary concessions by Gazprom, apparently

it will have to give way even further on those

gas sale prices in Europe, which have already

fallen very sharply for it.

In their

report, which was published literally yesterday

under international financial reporting standards

for the first quarter,

you can see that even though sales volumes

to Europe are growing, revenue is falling; the average

price is only about $190 per 1,000

cubic meters, and I think this

situation with Naftogaz, and Gazprom's loss in

the Stockholm arbitration case,

that defeat is important not so much from the point

of view of any current payments there,

there won't really be any of that, but from the standpoint

of a broad revision of contract terms

with other European consumers, this

will of course be very important. They

will of course take this case and

definitely

go to court with it and try

to push Gazprom back even further, weaken

its position, and squeeze money out of it. This has already

happened in previous years. So I

think Gazprom needs to prepare

now for major

losses in the European market. And here's another

question that

you often ask—many people

write about it, and yes, this really is

an important question: don't you think that

it is necessary

to shift the tax burden onto

individuals—that is, to make

Russians themselves become

taxpayers? You know, in our country

most people today have no dealings with

the tax inspectorate; taxes are paid by

employers, and

basically people don't even file tax returns

because it's not mandatory if you

work in one place—your employer pays

on your behalf. And the argument is

that Russians need to be made into

taxpayers so that they themselves

would take that payment to the tax office and

understand how much they personally give

to the state, so that they would develop

the motivation to demand things from that state.

Uh, a lot is written about this, and you

know, my friends, I want to put it this way:

this is indeed strategically

the right thing to do; it should be done, and

at some point it will have to be done. I can only

say that, most likely, in my

view—well, it would also be interesting

to know Alexei Navalny's opinion—write

to him personally with this question. This is not

a top-priority reform that needs

to be carried out, because first of all it is very

complicated—that is, we would immediately see a drop in

revenues, because collecting from, say, I don't

know, 70 million working people is much

more difficult than collecting from a smaller number of

companies and employers. And second,

people will of course grumble. I mean,

just imagine: you come to power, and you

have the opportunity to carry out

some reforms. You will need to quickly

do several things that will actually

improve the situation quite noticeably, right? But

getting involved in things like this, with

a long-term effect, but which

will negatively affect a large number of people—

well, most likely there may simply not be a mandate for that.

So I want to say that I

very much agree with this way of framing

the issue: people should

ultimately be taxpayers in our country. But I

think this is not among the top-priority

reforms—to shift the tax burden

specifically onto individuals—because the consequences

will only become apparent later, while dissatisfaction

will be great. We may see a drop in revenues,

and we need to understand that if we

have the opportunity to carry out real

reforms in Russia, it will be

a historic, very rare chance

of the kind that, in our country's history,

has not come along often. We will need

to manage to do the most important things in a very

short period of time in order to

truly, first, restart

economic growth, and second, put money into the hands of

the population—that's what we keep

talking about all the time. So unfortunately, this is one

of those reforms that, apparently, in my

view, will have to be

postponed until later. But there is also

another point people ask us about, and this

incidentally relates to the debate with Kudrin at the

St. Petersburg Economic Forum. This is

the question of lending rates: when

will entrepreneurs finally get

normal, acceptable loan rates?

Please give this a like.

I want to discuss this separately in one of the next programs.

I think that in June we should generally talk

about the Central Bank's policy and our

banking system. Most importantly, there

is exactly the same situation there with fat

cats as in the rest of the economy. Slide twenty.

Now look at the slide—you will now

see the record profit

our banks are reporting: 1 trillion rubles.

And at the same time, the volume of lending to the economy

is falling and falling, while profits are at record levels.

And if you look at the next

chart, you can see that this year

bank profits are growing even faster.

What does this stem from? It stems from

the fact that in our banking system

it is dominated by the 6 or 7 largest state-owned banks

which control more than half of

all assets, two-thirds of the corporate

loan portfolio, and the loan

portfolio for individuals. And, as you can see,

right now they are lowering deposit rates, giving you

less money, while on loans they are not

in any hurry, uh, to lower rates. On average, right now

they are, roughly speaking, around 12 percent on

loans, 14 percent for small

businesses.

Show the last slide again.

Demonopolizing the economy, including

the banking sector—this is the solution

that is needed. This is the solution we

advocate, and this is the solution that

you will not hear from the fat cats at

the St. Petersburg Forum (the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum), not from Kudrin

or Titov, and certainly not from the government.

So once again, be sure to watch

our program. Here we tell

the truth about all this. Here we will tell you about

the only sensible alternative—how to

truly ensure normal

balanced development for our country,

restart growth, and create opportunities

for our entire population, for all our

citizens, so that their incomes

increase, instead of, as in this new

so-called strategy,

economic development plan—horror, darkness, pensions will not

ever return to their pre-crisis level.

I will insist that Navalny's

colleagues simply distribute this article to everyone in

the regions. And you should definitely

support Alexei Navalny's campaign.

Be sure to watch our

program every Thursday at 4:00 p.m. Moscow time.

This was the program "Where's the Money?"

I am its host, Vladimir Milov, and

see you in a week. Thank you.

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