It is the duty of every honest citizen to spread it.
This is a continuation of the story of the theft of 5.4 billion rubles from the state budget. The very theft whose investigation led to the killing of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
It is hard to watch calmly. Your fists clench.
The first two installments were devoted to the valiant police officers—gang members Artyom Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov.
This installment is about the humble workers of the tax inspectorate. Olga Stepanova, head of Tax Inspectorate No. 28, together with her deputies, approved the transfer of 5.4 billion rubles from the budget (supposedly an overpayment of corporate profit tax) to a stolen company.
The money was transferred within 24 hours. Anyone who has ever dealt with VAT refunds from the state budget can appreciate what that means. This perfectly legal procedure normally takes months and even YEARS.
And then, what a coincidence, these women with modest salaries spent millions of dollars on real estate in Russia and abroad.
Within a month of the scam, Stepanova and her husband (pictured) registered offshore companies that received €8 million in accounts in Zurich. She bought a villa on the famous Palm in the UAE.
Two apartments in the Kempinski Resort Palm Jumeirah complex. This is what the interior looks like:
She bought a villa in Montenegro and built a mansion in Arkhangelskoye.
Stepanova’s deputies—Elena Anisimova and Olga Tsaryova—also picked up apartments in the Kempinski Resort. Such lovely neighbors. They can meet for cocktails in the evening and discuss how easy it is in Russia, once you collude with cops, prosecutors, and FSB officers, to steal money and kill witnesses.
Documents that quite convincingly confirm everything stated in the video can be found here:
Olga Stepanova and her husband.
Now Olga Stepanova, owner of villas, apartments, and Swiss bank accounts, no longer works for the tax service. She works at Rosoboronpostavka, that delightful agency through which 19 trillion rubles are supposed to pass for military rearmament. I have already written about how they handle rearmament.
Let me remind you that Rosoboronpostavka is overseen personally by the President of the Russian Federation. The very same guy who is supposedly fighting corruption so actively.
It is critically important to make sure that as many of our fellow citizens as possible see this video. So they can see the scheme. So they can see the faces of these killers. So they can see the luxurious interiors. So they can see the photograph of the Magnitsky family.
Every time some Kremlin crook starts feeding you nonsense about fighting corruption, this video should be watched again. That is real life: they stole, they killed, they got promoted.
It is astonishing, really. It is obvious that neither Medvedev nor Putin took any of that 5.4 billion for themselves. It is also obvious that both of them are thoroughly sick of all the noise surrounding the “Magnitsky case.” There is complete evidence in the case. A pile of documents showing the sudden and fantastic enrichment of those involved.
The full membership of the gang, and those protecting them, has been completely identified. There are probably around thirty of them.
Yes, it includes officers from the Interior Ministry, the FSB, the prosecutor’s office, and the tax service.
But Medvedev and Putin are, supposedly, the bosses. If not out of a concern for justice and restoring order, then at least for the sake of preserving their own prestige, they could have staged a demonstrative takedown of this gang and put them on trial.
But it does not happen. The entire political power of the “vertical of power” (Russia’s centralized power structure) is not enough to bring obvious crooks and killers to trial.
This is what everyone needs to be told about. The direct link to this video on YouTube is here. Click the Share button and a menu pops up, making it very easy to post this video to any social network—from Odnoklassniki and VKontakte to Twitter and Facebook.
Show the video to your foreign friends and colleagues—the English-language version is here.
Let me respond right away to those who will say: yes, Bill Browder, who has supported the investigation into the “Magnitsky case,” has his own skeletons in the closet—he evaded taxes.
Maybe he does. Maybe he did evade taxes. If so, then it should be investigated, proven, and prosecuted.
Let me remind you that a criminal case has been opened against Browder. He has been placed on a wanted list. And even before that, his Russian visa was revoked—for some reason.
And let me also remind you that most of the police officers implicated in the case were rewarded. Not only was not a single case opened against them—there was not even a single inquiry.
A bit of a disparity, isn’t it?
I will not hide it: my attitude toward the “Magnitsky case” is deeply personal. I did not know him, but he was my colleague—a lawyer.
He investigated corruption, which is what I am trying to do as well.
Magnitsky did it more effectively, which benefited society and the country—but brought him a мучительную смерть and tragedy to his family.
There is one episode in his case:
already dying and in constant pain, he asked the judge for permission to be given a glass of boiling water so he could soften the dry instant noodles, “Doshirak” (a common instant ramen brand in Russia), that he was living on.
They refused.
He ate the noodles dry.
Think about that. In the 21st century, in peacetime, an innocent man dies in prison and cannot even get a glass of boiling water.
And some creature in uniform, who condemned that man to death, smirkingly goes out and buys himself a Mercedes and a new dacha (country house).
Take this personally too.
In accordance with the ruling of the Lyublino District Court of October 17, 2011, in Stepanova’s lawsuit, I hereby announce the judicial decision adopted by the Lyublino District Court on October 17, 2011 (civil case No. 2-7051/2011).
more details are here.