Alexei Navalny on the program “Full Albats” from February 7, 2011

RTVI television and Echo of Moscow radio

present the program *Full Albats*.

>> Good evening. It is 8 p.m. on the air at the radio station

Echo of Moscow, RTVI television. I am Yevgenia

Albats. I am beginning our traditional

program devoted to the key events

of the week, the events that will

have an impact on politics in the coming

weeks and months. Such an event, in my

view, was the creation of

the website raspil.info.

More precisely, the fact that last week, on

Wednesday, fundraising began on the site

for the expert reviews and

to pay the lawyers who examine

officials' projects for the presence of

a corrupt component. And literally

within just a few days—more precisely, in 5 days—

the site rospil.info

received more than 2 million rubles, or

60,000

dollars. And the money came

in small amounts. As

Alexei Navalny told us, the largest

single transfer was 15,000 rubles.

The site's founder, a lawyer and well-known

blogger whose blog is read by nearly 32,000

people, is in the Echo of Moscow studio. Alexei,

hello.

>> Good evening.

>> Alexei, let me correct myself right away—were there

transfers larger than 15,000 rubles?

>> The largest transfer was 30,000 rubles,

the smallest was 1 kopeck. Someone sent 1 kopeck

as a joke. And here in the studio are well-known

internet figures—well, Anton Nosik needs no

introduction to our listeners,

since all the major projects of the Russian

internet in their early phase were created

precisely by Anton Nosik. Anton,

hello.

>> Good evening.

>> And Anton is also the creator and co-owner

of an internet directory.

Khuyu

>> khuyugl.

one is tempted to pronounce it the way people customarily do

back home. And today we will talk here

about the extent to which

the internet is capable of becoming a tool

for fighting corruption and, in a broader

sense, the extent to which the internet can become

an instrument of political and social

mobilization.

So, the first question is for Alexei

Navalny. We received a great many

questions for you here. There are 74 questions.

But the very first question is, tell me,

how much, as of today, as of

this Monday evening, has been raised?

>> Uh, approximately 2.6 million rubles.

>> And what do you know about the people who

are sending you money?

>> We know little about these people. We

know that there are many of them. That, it seems to me,

is the biggest achievement. Not even

the fact that in 5 days we

raised more than 2 million rubles, but that

there were more than 5,000 transactions. That is,

thousands of people are donating small

amounts of money, with the average being 400 rubles.

And in that sense

this rather worn-out theme about

some kind of social passivity seems to me

to be irrelevant, because

once again, thousands of people over 5 days

are sending money—not to help

a sick child, but for a purely

public-political, social,

civic project. This money will not

come back to them in any way. This money,

they are effectively giving to fight

corruption, for concrete

actions. That is, lawyers will go around,

they will litigate; it will be, well, a kind of war

against corrupt officials. It would seem these

corrupt people are stealing somewhere far away,

from someone unknown, but people are now ready

to take these things absolutely personally.

They personally hate all these crooks, and

they are giving money so that these

crooks can be prosecuted, including

through criminal proceedings. From my point

of view, this is a remarkable breakthrough. And what

happened with this Raspil. As for

who these people are specifically,

they are, uh, office workers, as far as I

understand—the main group is managers. And I

think they were simply able to respond quickly

within 5 days. These are

people who apparently have a lot of

access to the internet, who use

electronic payment systems and so

on. Therefore, well, I can assume

that these are primarily managers,

office workers, and so on. As

the project moves forward, I

hope we will bring in broader

groups of the public, citizens, and so

on.

>> So these are, first and foremost,

taxpayers who do care

where their taxes are going and what they are being spent on.

>> Absolutely, exactly right. That is,

if a few years ago, well, they steal there—no,

not a few years ago, 100 years ago,

300 years ago—they steal, well, they steal and

steal, but now it has reached such a point

the point where everyone already takes it

as a personal insult. And everyone

understands that this really is the biggest

obstacle to the country's development.

>> Alexei, have there been problems with money transfers,

with delays somewhere, do those kinds of problems

come up? Our problem is more that

technically we still can't

yet provide, um,

the use of all possible ways of collecting

money. For example, we can't accept

money from abroad, even though a huge

number of our compatriots

actually want to send money. I

wanted to note that this is a very active

group. These are people who are Russian

citizens, but they work abroad.

They see that life can be different and

the rules of the game can be different. That's why

they want to invest their money so that

something in Russia can be changed for the better.

So for now we still can't

use a huge number of

payment systems that are based

abroad. And, basically, out of a huge

range of options, we use only

the Yandex.Money system. So there's only one

narrow channel.

>> So you don't accept credit cards?

Credit cards. You can transfer money that way,

using credit cards, but it's

somewhat more complicated than in most

such crowdfunding

schemes. For example,

the charitable model that Anton

works with, among other things. So, um,

again, I expect that as

we add new methods,

for example, paying by SMS, um,

downloading an app to an iPhone or iPad, and

so on and so forth—there are very many options.

We'll make it possible for a larger

number of people to join us and

help us.

>> Just so I understand, the problem with receiving

transfers from abroad—is that due to

some kind of restrictions in Russian

law?

>> The Yandex.Money system doesn't allow

transfers by non-residents. Anton, correct

me if I'm wrong.

>> Yandex.Money is a ruble-based system. Where are

people sitting in America supposed to get

rubles, even if they log on to Yandex?

Formally, this is money within

the Yandex system. In other words, it's not a bank,

so it operates only in rubles.

You transfer rubles to a resident company,

to Yandex's Russian legal entity,

here, and it

transfers its claims rights. Well,

let's not bore the radio listeners

with those details, but as of

today it operates only

in rubles. That's why we can't

use such popular systems

as PayPal, or simple transfers from

credit cards issued by foreign banks,

transfers from dollar-denominated accounts, and

so on. But we'll successfully overcome all that,

especially since the experience

is substantial. And first and foremost,

of course, we're looking to those people

who have raised money for

charitable projects.

A fairly large amount is raised for charity, um,

and it has been for a long time. We, of course,

had concerns that people would give to

charity, but not to

political causes, but, fortunately,

here we managed to overcome

that stereotype successfully. That's exactly

the question I wanted to ask, um,

Anton, because, Anton, as I

understand it, you've organized more than one

charity project.

I'm fairly familiar with your

Pomogi.org. And,

>> Well, today, um, when I read

and looked at the screenshot in, um, Alexei's

blog, I naturally

got interested: they've raised 2.5

million, and how much did we raise in 2010?

In 2010, the charity foundation

Pomogi.org, for targeted aid to sick

children, raised 55 million rubles through various

forms of online payment. And over the entire time

of its existence, it has raised a total of

about 151 million rubles. So, in principle,

if we're talking about social apathy, if

we're talking about the idea that people aren't ready and

delegate helping the poor to Mr.

Abramovich (Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire) or someone else, that's actually

not true. There really are

those who think that, um, social

responsibility belongs only to business and

not to individual citizens. There are those who

think they still haven't bought themselves

the kind of car they want.

So the poor can wait.

And the fight against corruption can wait too. But, in

fact, we really do have

tens of thousands of caring, conscientious

citizens ready to send money. But

my experience had only shown that they were ready

to send money for the treatment of sick

children. And I am no less surprised than Alexei

that, um, it turns out you can also raise money

to create an internet project or to bring

qualified personnel into an internet

project—you can, um, you can also raise

money for that too. As for the possibility

of accepting, um, payments from abroad in

any foreign currencies, I think

we'll, uh, discuss that issue when

the program is over. I generally think

it's a three-minute issue in terms of difficulty

to open, open such an account in the system.

PayPal. I have an account in the American

PayPal system, and I think it’s not hard

to explain how it works.

>> You see, well. And you’re right, of course. Uh

I follow your

pomoag.org,

and several other, uh, websites,

that raise money for children.

You must agree, Anton, that when you go to

your website and you also offer

the option of choosing a specific child

to help, and you see those photographs, then,

in my opinion, even the most hard-hearted person, uh,

either calls you or sends money, right,

because you have that option there, if

needed, then, uh, you can, um, well, uh,

use some other methods to transfer

money, and so on, right?

What amazes me is that a website

that, uh, sets itself the goal of fighting

corruption, right, suddenly sparked such

enthusiasm. Even though, you must admit,

that, say, in the so-called “decadent West”

this has long been commonplace, yes, in fact,

and also

Clinton’s first campaign tested

the possibility of raising money, uh, through

the internet. Those were the very first

attempts. And Obama’s campaign

for president, yes, and they say that

so to speak, the campaigns of most

modern politicians raise funds

precisely

or largely through the internet.

>> No, the story of Obama is the story

of Navalny.

>> Once again,

>> Barack Obama’s story with the internet is

Navalny’s story in Russia. Obama didn’t

raise so much cash through

the internet because he was, say,

more popular online than McCain, right?

Though, of course, that mattered too. But if

we’re talking about money, not friends/followers,

right,

>> then the issue there began

not with Obama versus McCain, it began with the fact that

poor Obama, without institutional

support, was up against Hillary Clinton, bursting with

money.

>> Uh-huh.

>> The drama of Obama versus Clinton was that Obama

was supposed to be crushed with money. And that’s where

the ordinary American,

who didn’t much like the idea that in the Clinton family

the presidency would be passed on

by sexual transmission

to the presidency.

>> You mean dynastically? Yes,

>> Sexually. She’s not his daughter, after all, but rather

his sexual partner.

They used their ruble—dollar, pardon me—

to stand against

Hillary Clinton’s money. In exactly the same way,

as people now, with their rubles,

are resisting, uh, corruption by giving this

money to Navalny so that he can bring those

corrupt officials to account. It’s not that,

of course, in America it’s natural and

logical to raise money through the internet,

because all the mechanisms exist there and there aren’t

all these monstrous restrictions

that we have here, where it isn’t

properly regulated by law. But

in that sense, the situations of McCain, Obama, and

Hillary were the same. All of them

had equal access to these

donors.

And they got roughly the same number of votes there, say,

Obama and McCain got

about the same number of votes, right, with a difference of

10%.

But in terms of money, there’s no comparison. Voting

with one’s wallet was meaningful, just as

it was there. Are you saying that

the behavior of our internet users

is quite comparable to the behavior of

American internet users,

who are used to using, who

trust transferring their money through

the internet to people who are taking action?

>> No, in every other respect

there’s no connection. Two different worlds (a Soviet-era phrase meaning completely different realities). In

every other respect

in America, donating money online to causes you

consider right and useful

is an everyday

reality,

>> Really?

>> But in Russia, it’s unheard of. And, uh, one could

say that Alexei Navalny

created a precedent, if not for

the animator Bubnov, who raised

50,000 euros for a cartoon about Shalokah

Holmes.

>> Well then explain it to me. You

see, Anton, you live in this

internet environment.

>> Well

>> what happened? Why did they believe

Navalny and start sending him money?

Why aren’t they afraid that Navalny

will disappear tomorrow into the seas of the

Bermuda Triangle with all

that money?

>> You know, quite a lot of people thought exactly that

and simply didn’t send any money.

That’s all. But some people got tired

of suspecting a person of every possible sin,

uh, a person about whom they know

nothing bad, right?

Decent people, who themselves have never stolen money from

others, proceed from

a presumption of other people’s decency,

especially when it comes to a person

like Navalny, about whom

basically, if you just type

the word “Navalny” in your LiveJournal, and you

you’ll see how these hired

by Transneft, Rosneft, VTB, and so on

little hamsters will come running to spam your LiveJournal or

your Twitter with kompromat (damaging material) on Navalny.

just glitched out

>> no, I’m explaining to you that against

Navalny, for the purpose of compromising and

discrediting him in social media,

very large budgets are being spent. As

the owner of blogs with large

audiences on LiveJournal and Twitter, I see these

budgets at work.

>> how much is that?

>> what do you mean?

>> well, you’re saying the budgets are large.

>> I don’t see, I don’t see the money sticking out

of their pockets. I see how many

different strategies of discrediting and

compromising are being used. I see

how many different websites have been created,

resources, blogs, and so on, in order to

explain what a bad person Navalny is. If, with all

this heroic activity,

with a huge report in *The Marker*,

uh, about what kind of family business

Navalny’s parents have, because it says there

that he’s a shareholder, so let’s

dig around and see what kind of

flax-processing factory his mother founded in

Maloyaroslavets. Just imagine: the newspaper *The*

*Marker* runs a six-screen-long piece next to one about

how Nemtsov didn’t pay his utility bills. That’s the

>> same company as LifeNews. Yes,

>> Life, Marker. Yes, of course,

of course. So the Gabrilianov gentlemen

go digging around. What did Navalny do wrong?

And they find that his mother has a stake in

a flax-processing factory where she

worked.

>> I’m afraid Alyosha’s about to sprout

wings. And the little wings

have actually already gone through several

stages of me blushing. We’ll scratch them for you later. And

>> no, well, it seems to me that a person shouldn’t

be proud of the fact that he hasn’t stolen

anything. In my view, that’s the normal

state of affairs.

>> Absolutely. Alexei, by the way, I wanted to ask you:

what exactly is going on

with that case which, when you were still

in the United States, I remember,

before you spoke in Congress,

the Interior Ministry suddenly, for some reason, sent information

to the West, uh, saying that you had been implicated in something

in Kirov Region. What happened with that case?

>> The Interior Ministry said they were investigating my

suspicious activity. Then

some strange case appeared in

Kirov Region, where I allegedly

caused what is called inflicting damage

without signs of theft, gave bad advice,

and caused 1 million rubles in damages. But

for now, an investigator from Kirov came

temporarily, took my statement,

after which, uh, they issued a decision

refusing to open a criminal case. Well,

it was all so obviously stitched together with white

thread (a Russian expression meaning blatantly fabricated), as I understand it, that they simply

weighed everything and decided not to pursue

the matter, because here Anton is absolutely

right: all their efforts at some kind of

discrediting campaign have actually worked in

our favor, because, well, for a person

who more or less understands

the internet, especially if they have

a blog or something, it’s completely

obvious that there is a campaign of

discreditation spending money. And if these

these big

>> administrative resources

>> big, thick-faced guys who

have quite obviously stolen billions,

are also spending money, hiring people,

so they can go around writing in

the comments: "Just look,

Navalny studied at Yale, he’s a CIA agent."

It’s obvious to everyone that this is just

state crooks,

who have become completely brazen. And it’s precisely

to spite all these people,

not because they like me all that

much, but I’m sure it’s to spite these

people that they send me their 400 rubles.

So that I can use those 400 rubles

to, well, go after these people,

to the extent of our abilities and strength,

and make life difficult for them.

The proof is working.

>> One second, because we’ve only got

a little over a minute until the break. Alexei,

so, in Kirov Region this whole case

was left hanging and came to nothing. I,

by the way, heard from a very

respected person, Sergei Guriev,

whom you also know. He told me:

"If this is all they found on

Navalny, then Navalny should already

have a monument erected to him right now." I mean

that Kirov case.

>> The Kirov police told me that

Moscow police had come in

from who knows where, put together this

case, and left. So they were all very

surprised, realized there was nothing behind

the case, and closed it.

>> And what about—tell me—pressure on

your parents’ business? What’s going on there in general?

>> Well, so far we haven’t seen any

serious pressure, fortunately. Well,

they’re just fraying their nerves there, yes, constantly

some people keep showing up. That is happening, unfortunately.

And, well, it’s clear that when I

started, uh, these

anti-corruption investigations,

it wasn’t really expected that part of them

would involve my mom and dad, yes,

who are now constantly having some

people are forcing their way in, staging provocations,

phone calls, and so on.

>> So do your mom and dad own Rosneft or

Transneft? I forgot.

>> Well, theirs is called the Kabyakovskaya

wickerwork factory, not a

flax-spinning one. It’s a small business,

and I’m proud that my parents run it.

Well, in any case, they

support me. They say, "Well, we’ll

put up with it."

>> So they weave things out of wicker.

The workers weave something out of wicker.

No, yes,

>> that’s basically what the business is. We

have to go to a break now, and we’ll come back

to this intriguing topic in a couple of

minutes.

>> And another studio is about to go

on air now.

>> No, the news is coming up now.

>> It’s just that you should know. No. It’s just that the

internet stream is still running. Guys,

>> well, we’re not going to start undressing. They can’t hea

Whatever you want.

>> 30 in Moscow. In the studio is Alyona Gribnyova.

Good evening, this is the news on Echo. During a

shootout in Nalchik, according to updated

reports, a police officer and an FSB officer (Federal Security Service) were killed

RIA Novosti news agency

in Kabardino-Balkaria. Earlier,

it had been reported that those who attacked

law enforcement officers

had been detained. However, now

investigators say that

the assailants who opened fire

escaped. The shootout took place in a

residential district. By the way, Antosh, do you know,

that the main people who

voted for Obama, well, aside from the fact that

90% of Black voters voted

faster

of South historical independence

the agency reports

has already promised long-term partnership

relations with the new state

I welcome you.

the United States

so they were effectively voting against it with their own money

after all, his average donations were also

something like $25, that’s exactly, exactly what I

mean—those sums were collected kopeck by kopeck

according to the American leader

defeated

return beautifully

into the company—overall, it’s amazing

the chief said on the television channel’s broadcast

Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass also had

a grand battle with the establishment, so it may

be that Obama is in fact a nominee

of the establishment, but nevertheless, at the level of

rhetoric, everything really

document

the Polish internet portal The reports

the film titled Straight from the Sky will

consist of five episodes; its director and

screenwriter, Piotr Matwiejczyk, emphasizes

that the film will not be about politics, but about

real people and emotions. The director

says he does not intend

to take anyone’s side. By the end of

this month, the respondent expects

locations,

which are not in the clip us Bert Oskal

sel

>> they say he may take everyone, look

we did a special issue about this

it was first posted on social

internet

to television; in the end, it reported a video in the case of

violations

the brother was to become the owner

American orphans

horse

>> the television company

and Echo of Moscow radio present

the program

Full Albats.

>> Good evening once again. It is 22:33.

Here in the Echo of Moscow studio, we are talking about

the extent to which the internet can become

an instrument of social and political

mobilization. And in particular, one

example of such social mobilization is

Alexei Navalny’s website raspil.info,

where people send money to fight

corruption in Russia. Alexei, a few

more questions that I’d like to ask you

right away. So, here’s a

question. Goodness, I forgot this person’s

name. What is your operating model in the event

that a corrupt tender appears in

the regions?

Do you handle it from Moscow, send

specialists, or look for volunteers

locally?

>> Well, that depends on how

corrupt it is, right? If it’s some

completely obvious, blatant scheme, then I

think that in most cases it

will be canceled by the local anti-monopoly service

there. So from Moscow we

will send it to the local anti-monopoly

service, which, fortunately, still

remains one of the least

corrupt institutions. And there is

a strong chance that it will be canceled

right there without our intervention.

And if such intervention is needed,

we’ll look for a lawyer locally. For now, we can’t

pay such lawyers, but we have

a huge number of requests from

the regions, so I think we’ll find

someone there on the ground who will be ready

to support this. But again, depending

on the case—if we’re talking about

billions of rubles, then maybe

someone will go there.

>> Uh-huh. And what is the minimum amount, in rubles,

of the corrupt component of an auction,

such that the cost of fighting it does not

exceed its size? In other words, how large

does the corrupt component there have to be

for it to make sense?

>> It’s absolutely unimportant. That is, if

you look at it,

>> even if your costs of, of

>> It’s a matter of principle. It’s, it’s a matter of

principle, because there are cases—and this,

by the way, applies to websites,

and various IT technologies—where the amounts

are relatively small: 3 million rubles,

2 million rubles, 5 million. But the theft is

so brazen

>> and shameless that we understand that

tomorrow, if this person isn’t taught a lesson

now, he’ll just as easily siphon off 300 million

rubles. So, uh, the amount at stake here is absolutely irrelevant;

the amount being put up

here doesn’t matter—the principle does.

>> Uh-huh. Andrei, well, besides, if, uh,

if we say that our cutoff threshold is

100,000 dollars or euros, for example, then

the only thing we’ll achieve with someone

who wants to steal a million

is that he’ll simply split that

tender into 10 parts, right, just like

people do to avoid triggering banks’ financial monitoring

by sending not 10,000

dollars but, say, 9,999. This isn’t being done

for the sake of those kinds of games.

>> Ah, that makes sense, yes. That hadn’t even occurred to

me. A question from Andrei in Moscow,

a civil servant, by the way. Alexei,

will the experts—will RosPil’s experts mainly

monitor the government procurement website

or will they also

use other methods to look for

signs of corruption? What methods?

>> Well, once again, how does the whole system work? Uh,

almost everything the state buys

has to go through the electronic procurement

system. There’s a special website,

everything is visible there, and anyone can go and

see who is buying what. Right now we have

experts and a monitoring group

that has registered on the RosPil website.

There are about 2,000 of them. Some are

more active, some, well,

of course many more people have registered

than those who actually

work. But these people do monitor things. Plus, uh,

I’ll say it openly: there are simply

insiders and competitors. If you got cheated

in a bidding process, if you were unfairly shut out,

then you quietly write a letter: ‘Hey,

guys, you know, this particular

tender is corrupt.’ So we

collect all this information, filter out

the obvious nonsense, and then we

identify the real cases. If this tender concerns, say,

fuel oil purchases, then we look for

an expert—experts also register

on our website—in the field of

fuel supplies, and we send

him that tender, and he tells us

—all of this is being done free of charge

for now—that, most likely, this is

indeed corruption, that the real price

should be such-and-such. And in the technical

specifications there are certain clauses by means of

which they exclude all the other

competitors. After the expert

gives us an assessment, then

a professional lawyer gets involved,

writes a complaint, sends it in, and if they refuse,

he goes to court, and so on.

In other words, the legal

machinery kicks in. That’s the model

we work under. And here, of course, the possibilities

for our work

can be quite flexible. For example,

in some cases the procedure formally

complies with the law. It’s just that

the price is enormous, right? They buy something

that costs 10 rubles for 100 rubles,

but formally the procedure hasn’t been violated.

There simply were no other competitors. In that case

you need to write not to the

anti-monopoly service, but simply

demand that the prosecutor’s office open

a case. How did this happen? It’s 10 times

more expensive there.

>> So how many lawyers do you need in order

to handle all these requests? As President

Medvedev says—and these aren’t my calculations—

every year, 1 trillion rubles are stolen in the public procurement system.

So no matter how much we raise,

well, within reason, it will

still be too little. And here, clearly,

it’s obvious that we won’t be able to replace

the Interior Ministry, the prosecutor’s office, the FSB (Federal Security Service),

financial monitoring, the anti-monopoly service, and

so on. In other words, what we can

cover—even in the best

case—is, I don’t know, maybe half a percent of

what is happening.

Of what is being stolen,

>> of what is being stolen, of what

is happening. But in any case, we want to

again, show society, we

show those same agencies that

people are ready to unite, that people will

apply pressure. And it’s an excellent illustration for

all those guys who sit there

carving things up, that even if you’ve made arrangements

with the prosecutor’s office, with the police (militsiya, the former Russian police force), and you’ve got everything

covered, theoretically we can still

find you and get to you.

>> Wonderful, Anton. I remember when you

talked about the website pomogi.org, you

said that you had reduced the staff to the bare minimum.

Right.

>> No,

>> No, I didn’t reduce the staff. The staff

is what it is. It’s just that for it

The people who donate for

a child don’t pay. And from the money donated for

a child, not a single kopeck is deducted

for staff salaries. For

>> And who pays for that?

You personally? Yes. And my friends contribute too,

and we also have some other donors.

But money donated for children goes to

the children; money donated for the organization’s needs goes

to the organization’s needs.

So

>> so now it’s all kept separate,

>> right? But that means we don’t use it that way.

Russian law says that

a nonprofit organization may, from

the money it has raised for any

purpose whatsoever, spend 20% on itself. That is

utter nonsense, because if you have

a fundraiser who works rather

poorly and raises 200,000, that means he

can, uh, spend 40,000 of that on himself,

right? But if he gets lucky and is given

20 million, then it turns out that he

can already put 4 million in his own

pocket. That’s complete nonsense, you have to admit,

I mean, if we’re talking about

charity, then it’s complete nonsense

that, uh, an organization’s costs

are tied not to the actual cost

of the organization’s operations, which can easily be

audited, but to how much

this organization has raised.

>> Alexei, I have an immediate question for you.

The question will inevitably arise,

who will audit you, who

will control the spending, what

expenses there will be, what percentage of incoming

funds will go directly to

lawyers, and what share will go, I don’t know, to, uh,

the people who maintain the website

or do something else. So how are you

planning to, uh, solve this problem?

Because it’s a very important one. We

tried to simplify everything as much as possible,

uh, including because it is very

important for us and, I think, for those who

will come after us and raise money for

other civic projects. It is

fundamentally important, because if we

do something wrong now,

make a mistake, whether accidentally or

deliberately, and this

project comes to nothing and there is

suspicion that the money is somehow

going to the wrong place, it will be a huge

collapse both for us and for everyone who comes

after us. That’s why we made it as

simple as possible: all the money is spent on

lawyers, except for a small amount

for maintaining the server. And the password

to our Yandex.Money account

is held by several people. Anton is one of them.

At any moment, they can log in

to this account and see who

sent money, how much came in, and exactly to whom

it went out. And the names and work results

of every person who receives

money from the funds raised will

be published on the website, and so on. So

it will be, uh, as

transparent a system as possible.

>> But what if you made a deal with Nosik?

>> It’s not just me and Nosik there, there are also

three other people now, and we

will bring the number up to eight. And one of them

will definitely be someone who

doesn’t like me, for example, someone with whom it would be

hard for me to strike a deal. Representatives, I don’t

know, from

from among those who

are readers of your website,

someone will be included, someone from,

well, from ordinary people on the other side

or whatever group you want.

>> We can include them, but we don’t want to take just

anyone at all, because after all it is

the password. If you get hold of it, then

theoretically you can’t steal

the money, but you can create

obstacles, problems, try to

change the password, and so on.

>> Well, it’s very easy to create

a problem. You can simply try several times

to enter the payment password

by brute force, and Yandex will block it as

an attempt

>> something like that. So the system is

multi-layered: you can’t steal the money, but

you can create problems, so we

still aren’t ready to give the password to just

anyone. Besides, the people

who are currently in the oversight

group can see part of the information from

the recipients. That is, theoretically they

can see some of the accounts of the people who

paid.

Some Abdusman, uh, from the internet

Abdusman from, uh, the internet community will

be with you.

>> They all are, in that sense. That is, if

you look at the people who are currently

there, there’s Nosik, there’s Plushev, who, by the way,

works for Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station),

there’s Dagamov, the top

blogger — much more of an ombudsman, really — uh,

and Fritz Morgen, a fairly well-known blogger.

We’ll bring in several more people. They

are all exactly that — the point is that we didn’t

bring in any famous actors,

directors, journalists, and so on. These are

just people whom, well, everyone

knows there, in that

internet community. People may have different

attitudes toward them, but these people are

different.

>> And Dogamov is someone else,

>> right?

>> Someone else.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Yes. Wonderful. And now a question for both of you.

A question has come in from your,

well, namesake Anton. A question from Antosh.

He is a translator and a TV and radio host from

Saratov. And he says: "Aren't you afraid,

isn't Alexei afraid of repeating the fate of

Assange?"

>> Though unlike him, you will have

essentially a Russian court — the most senseless

and merciless of all.

>> Surely there are some unsavory episodes in your biography too

that could be seized upon.

Anton, why are you so

convinced that there are episodes in Navalny's biography

that one could

pick at? I've known Alyosha (a diminutive of Alexei) fairly well

for seven years now. I think it's actually

very hard to pin anything on him, really.

This is written by

>> And that's what this person writes. I'm objecting

to the author of the question right away. Yes, I, uh,

I really have known Alexei since 2004

and rather closely somehow.

>> That doesn't matter — a case can be fabricated

against absolutely anyone.

>> No, but the author of the question is simply saying

that surely in your biography

there are some unpleasant episodes. There must be plenty

someone could latch onto.

>> Well, I used to regularly not wear my

seat belt.

>> Ah, yes. I think there were some things like that — I had

a car that wasn't properly cleared, and so on.

So you can pick on

any person. The point is that in my life

knock on wood, I haven't done anything

for which I could be brought to

criminal liability, or even serious

administrative liability. But

still, I'm a reasonable person. I

understand — as the well-known saying goes:

"Give me the man, and I'll find the case" (a Russian saying about politically motivated prosecution).

So, but that is not

an obstacle that should make us

stop. That's all. It sounds banal,

but you can't jail everyone; someone else will

take his place. That is exactly why we are creating

a system that is so flexible. In other words,

the worst thing I could do would be to create

a system where, if you remove

Navalny — say, I don't know,

throw him in jail — then everything immediately collapses. That

definitely will not happen. That is, even if

tomorrow I get tired of doing this and

say, "That's it, I'm moving to New

Zealand and I'll enjoy the

sunsets there," the system will still continue

to work. That's the whole point of it: it will not

depend on any one specific

person.

>> Exactly. Just as if I

die tomorrow — perish the thought,

>> and I'm not superstitious, uh — then my foundation will

not only not cease

to exist, it won't even have less money.

The money I give

will be given by others.

>> I see. Anton, let's try

to play, uh, devil's

advocate, so to speak. What risks does

Navalny face? Navalny's risks are very simple.

Uh, the structures opposing him,

with their methods

of operation and with their, as we can already see

from the Kirov case and from the pressure on

his parents, their ties to the силовые структуры (security and law-enforcement agencies), well,

we understand their methods, right?

>> No, but we can see that the Kirov case

turned out to be a dud. Yes.

>> Tell me, those who were tasked with this,

>> In what way? Since you have such a good,

so to speak, understanding of how

our internet works, what forces are at play there,

what kind of problems they could create

for him.

>> Yes, and on the internet, in fact, they don't even need

to create any special problems for him.

There are hackers nowadays, and

they can crash his site. Yes,

remember how it was with Assange, when, uh,

the very same PayPal refused

to process transfers. .info is an American

structure. Yandex.Money is, um, it is

a project. Although it is a separate limited

liability company operating the payment

system Yandex.Money, nevertheless it is

a project of a Dutch corporation

planning an IPO abroad.

>> You mean ChronoPay or what?

>> Oh, good Lord. Yandex. Yandex.Money.

>> So, Yandex.Money belongs

to Yandex. Yandex is heading to America.

Why did you say that Rospil.info is an

American st-

>> What? .info is a domain in America. The .info domain

is in America. So if Obama

wanted to pull an Obama on it,

>> no, to shut it down — that means that

tomorrow a local police officer or, I don't

know, some Major Karpov can come along, and he

won't be able to simply shut down

that domain name just like that, because it

is theoretically located in the United States,

>> or rather, practically located in the United States, and

you can't just take it and shut it down.

>> The registrar is American — a trap, in a way, for

those wishing to exert pressure on this

project by force, using

territorial jurisdiction and

the fact that this project belongs to Russia.

All they will achieve is that this

project will simply move to another jurisdiction

in one minute, as, in fact,

you know, that whole group of sites,

including Newsru.com, is hosted on a

technical platform in New York, right,

>> but in the meantime, we have seen that

what was happening with WikiLeaks, yes, when they

were forced to move to a Swiss domain

there, yes, because we

>> had their domain shut down

>> on the orders of the U.S. authorities. That is

monstrous. It’s a complete outrage, because

>> we know that it was done on the orders of

the U.S. authorities.

>> Well, of course, this is a monstrous

violation of absolutely every norm

of American civil law. And

in fact, this was the first time I

seriously thought that it would be good to take the internet out from under

American jurisdiction and move it somewhere

else

>> to Mars, yes,

>> and I agreed with what Russia and Tunisia had been saying

on this subject all these

years, yes: that America can

abuse its power. Though this was the first

case when America actually did abuse it.

Mm. Yes, but in Russia a similar

symmetrical move would be possible if

Rospil were in the .ru domain. But

since it is not in the .ru domain, but

in the .info domain, then hardly

for the Obama administration.

>> Hacker attacks,

>> yes, of course, hacker attacks,

sure, as many as you like. There were hacker attacks on

the resources of the NBP (National Bolshevik Party).

How well protected are you from hackers? You have already

been regularly subjected

to DDoS attacks and the site goes down. But by “goes down,” I mean

that it becomes inaccessible for a while. But

that’s pointless. I mean, fine,

today it’s unavailable, tomorrow it’s back,

that makes no sense whatsoever. And this is

again a classic example of budget siphoning

there: some crooks give other

crooks money to organize these

hacker attacks. Nobody understands what

it even is. The site is unavailable for a while,

which changes absolutely

nothing. In that sense, the internet is a much

safer and friendlier environment

than physical presence. Because

a lawyer physically sitting

in an office and writing—well, who can come to him?

The most terrifying weapon

of the Russian authorities: a fire inspector, who

says, “That’s it, we’re sealing the offices,

shutting them down. Right here, immediately,

there’s going to be a fire.” And also

>> let’s remove your fire-hazardous computers.

>> Yes, yes, yes. Exactly right. Or there can come

the police (militsiya, the former Russian police force), who, within

the framework of a criminal case opened

somewhere in Dagestan, will say, “Well,

that’s it, everything must be seized, including the server.”

“There may be extremism here.” They’ll take away

the computers. And then physically there will be nothing left

to publish all this on. We’ll overcome

these problems, of course, but

still, this is exactly where

the danger is quite serious.

Theoretically. Well, I don’t know, they could

hack Yandex.Money and steal from it. Well,

theoretically, yes. And then, in that case,

I really would find myself in a situation where

I would have to reimburse that money to everyone

because after all I am

the guarantor, and I’d have to write off about minus 2

million rubles (about 2 million RUB).

>> And how real is the threat that

a Yandex wallet could be hacked?

>> Mm.

I’m not prepared to discuss the vulnerability

of Yandex as a system, but the threat to this,

to this particular account, lies

not only in the realm of hacking, I

beg your pardon, Yandex. It also lies in the realm

of the fact that the computer from which

Navalny logs into it,

>> that computer could be taken when police officers come

to check whether the Windows license is legitimate, and

they’ll carry that computer away. Yes.

The licensing. Everything I have is absolutely in order.

Well, that still has to be checked.

>> In order to carry out an inspection,

it is completely irrelevant whether, as a result of that

inspection, they find anything. The main thing is

that they need to remove the computer. Especially

convenient.

>> All right, Anton, so how do you protect yourself from that

then?

>> Well, how do you protect yourself from—You know,

today I twice saw a chunk of ice

fall from a roof. Yes, of course, on the one hand there are

certain safety rules

that minimize this

risk. But on the other hand, today I went into

several buildings and came out of several

buildings. I cannot be far away from

the entrance to a building at the moment when I

step through it. Well, we’re short on time, I

understand, yes. So, a question for you from

Alexander Cheremkhin, an economist from Moscow. And

tell me, Alexei, please tell us,

how do you assess

the prospects for e-government in

Russia with functions similar to those

created in Estonia? And second, what

let’s take that as the first question. I think

that is extremely unlikely, because

take the example of Estonia. In Estonia, as far as I

understand it, you can vote over the internet.

They had some kind of test

system. That is,

>> all dealings with the state

are conducted exclusively online.

>> That means you can file

any complaint over the internet, really

even go to court entirely online. Here, only

just now have they introduced the possibility of applying to the commercial court

with a complaint in electronic

form. And that makes the government

much more transparent and

in some sense, much more vulnerable.

That is, the role of citizens increases, while the role

of the government correspondingly decreases.

Is our government ready to go along with

that? No. I think all our

talk about e-government

is limited to the fact that everyone there

is shown a meeting, everyone was given an iPad,

and they sit there on that iPad, playing

some cheerful little games. There. That is

what is called e-government

in Russia.

>> Mm-hmm. How did the story with, uh,

Transneft end?

>> Well, it hasn’t ended. It won’t

be over for many months, I

think even years. It’s clear that

the people who stole a billion dollars

are not going to give up that easily; they won’t come in and

confess. This will be a very

long, tedious investigation. Right now

the police, in all their various

forms and guises, are still trying, and they can’t

refuse to open a criminal

case, but they also can’t really open one,

especially after both Medvedev and

Putin more or less said that, well, it should

be investigated. So what’s happening is this kind of

traditional muddling around. They still don’t have

a political decision on what to do

about it, because if they start putting

someone in prison, they’ll have to imprison a great

many people, and it’s not clear where exactly

the very top of the chain of people who should be jailed is.

It’s entirely possible they’ll have to jail

someone who, in theory, is untouchable.

>> Who is untouchable here? We have

>> No, I think anyone can be jailed. I think

anyone can. But, uh,

>> No. But do you really think that Semyon

Vainstok forgot to share with anyone during

those years when he was allowed to

skim off all that money?

>> Well, I’d like to know with whom.

>> Well, I think you know,

>> Well, I’ll say it plainly. Come on, why

play games here? I believe

that Prime Minister Putin could not have

been unaware of all this. He knew

about it, and he personally provided—and still

continues to provide—political

protection

to Transneft in general, and specifically to the

schemes that were going on around the, uh,

construction of the ESPO oil pipeline. It was

his personal project. He personally

covered everything there, personally kept an eye on everyone. He

personally appointed Vainstok after all this

to head Olympstroy (the state corporation overseeing Olympic construction). He

personally appointed Tokarev. Transneft

is essentially a kind of civilian

special service. Uh, all these

idlers, retired and active

FSB colonels and generals just

graze there in herds. And speaking of charity, Transneft

to this day remains

the largest charitable

organization in the country. Only, unfortunately,

no one has ever seen where

it spends its money. Yes, in 2006 and

2007 they spent half a billion

dollars on unknown

charity. It’s absolutely absurd.

They proved in court to Navalny that they were not

obliged to tell anyone where

the money went—not even their shareholder Navalny. Through

the commercial court, they fought off

any such obligation. You understand that

corporate charity is

a PR budget. It’s a budget that is supposed to

glorify the corporation—show how kind

and good it is. But Transneft went to

commercial court and argued that this was its

commercial secret—where it gives money to whom.

>> And it really is unknown. What is known is: to

the Kremlin Foundation.

>> There are two recipients there. One of them

is literally called the Kremlin Foundation, which

is explicitly described as having been organized by senior

FSB officers. And there is another organization with

an equally wonderful name,

Solidarity or Commonwealth,

about which nothing at all is known, but it

appears to be something similar.

>> Well, it’s definitely not Boris

Nemtsov’s Solidarnost (the Russian opposition movement).

>> It’s definitely not Polish Solidarity, either. Not

Polish Solidarity.

>> It’s more like the solidarity of some other

people.

>> Mm-hmm. Very curious. Anton, what do you

think? I’m extremely

inspired by this project, uh,

Navalny’s, because it seems to me

that we suddenly saw that people are quite

serious about this—because it is a serious matter—to

put in their own ruble, yes, into a certain

social—or, if you like, not just social

but political—project. Do you

really think that our internet community,

which for a long time

seemed a little, to me,

like a community of people hiding under the bed,

forgive me the expression, has

really—the internet really—decided

to take part in civic and

political projects? As of

today, in financing

this specific project,

Navalny’s project,

there have been made,

as we heard, more than 5,000 transactions.

If we imagine that, on average,

that’s about one and a half transactions per

person, then that means that

3,000 people have lost their innocence over

the last five days in the sense of financing

public organizations. You

can you imagine a situation in which

300,000

>> You know, uh, it doesn’t really matter much

whether these people make up

1% of the entire Russian internet audience or

half a percent. What matters far more

is what they can achieve together. And

in that sense, Navalny bears a very great

responsibility to make sure that

the example set by these people does not turn out to be

disappointing.

>> Alexei, you have one minute left. Yes, I

just want to say that I am very

grateful to everyone who supports this

project. And indeed, this is a

colossal responsibility for us. We

simply have absolutely no room for error here,

not the slightest. And of course we will do everything

possible to live up to

the expectations and make sure that this

money is spent, uh, efficiently and

really makes its contribution to the fight

against corruption, which has, well, simply

become all-pervasive over the past 3–4 years.

>> Have you estimated how much money you want to raise

and how many people you want to involve in this

project? The minimum target was 3 million,

the maximum target was 5 million. Obviously,

we have already almost reached the minimum target.

So we’re going to get started. We will have

a staff of four to six lawyers working on it.

If we raise more money, we’ll expand our

activities—we’ll see. We need to begin,

we need to show people some

results. I’m sure we’ll raise

much more if we are effective and

prove to all these people that they are

not donating their money in vain.

Anton,

>> do you think Navalny will soon

run into trouble?

>> Well, actually, the worst thing he could

have done, he has already done. He has already taken on

Rosneft, Transneft, and VTB.

>> And what do you think—if he

does run into trouble, will the internet community

be ready to defend him?

>> I think that if he does run into

trouble, unfortunately it will be of such a

kind that any defense from the

community would be useless.

I mean what happened recently

to Kashin (Russian journalist Oleg Kashin). Those are the kinds of risks taken on

by a person in our country who publicly

fights criminality in power.

>> Well, don’t you think that would create risks

for the authorities if they tried to

deal with Navalny that way?

>> I think that in this case what’s being stirred up is

an entirely different hornet’s nest. Not

Putin or Medvedev, but specific

embezzlers, for whom these are sources of

millions of dollars. And one of them,

in order to protect those sources, may well be

ready to act. Those are real risks. We have to think about that. I

hope everything will be all right with Navalny, but

I think we all understand

that it is in our interest to help

Navalny, defend Navalny, and

do everything we can to believe that he will

succeed in this. That’s all. We’ll talk again

in a week. Thank you.

that was one hell of a promo for Navalny, which makes me,

honestly, feel very awkward—thank you very much,

I’m very embarrassed.