It’s really interesting how these things fit together. In St. Petersburg, an economic forum is underway where everyone is discussing what to do about capital flight, the economic recession, and falling investment.
Meanwhile in Moscow, searches are being carried out at the homes of Moscow City Duma candidates Nikolai Lyaskin and Konstantin Yankauskas. And on quite a scale too—across six addresses: their apartments, their parents’ apartments, and the apartments of their wives’ parents. It is quite possible that similar searches are also underway at the home of Anti-Corruption Foundation executive director Vladimir Ashurkov.
Half an hour after the search began, Czech agents reported the following:
So, in other words, Putin ordered Bastrykin to revive—now in criminal-case form—the United Russia lie that “Navalny and his friends stole all the campaign donations,” which they were already pushing a year ago during the mayoral campaign. I remember that at almost every meeting with voters, the same young people would show up shouting, “We’re sending money to Navalny, and he’s going to steal it.” And even back then there was that ridiculous talk about “foreign IPs.”
A reminder: we began raising money for the campaign on July 24. Here is the post about it. We are not United Russia, utility monopolies do not donate money to us, so the plan was to rely on small contributions from a large number of people. Thanks to your support, we raised a record 103,375,323 rubles (about 103.4 million rubles). That would have been very difficult without using fully lawful and legal online payment tools—Yandex.Money above all.
Campaign manager Leonid Volkov explained how this worked in his post. I’ll briefly explain. People donated money to the wallets—that was their personal business. To make sure the money ultimately reached the campaign account, everything above 1 million rubles (the maximum permitted donation from an individual) was redirected to the PARNAS party, which had nominated me in the election and had the right to transfer money to me. Thus, all donations made to the Yandex wallets ultimately ended up in the campaign fund in a completely lawful way. The scheme was reviewed by the Moscow City Election Commission, and there were no complaints about it. All Yandex wallets were connected to Yandex.Audit, so everyone could see the amounts and the movement of funds. You can still look at it now, by the way.
http://yaudit.org/yaudit/41001866154016 http://yaudit.org/yaudit/410011941381819 http://yaudit.org/yaudit/410011270217317
Because the system was fully transparent, people liked it, and the response far exceeded expectations. Neither I nor the campaign’s finance team have the slightest doubt that all the money went to the election campaign.
After the campaign, the headquarters produced a detailed report on its work, and the official election report amounted to a stack of paper taller than I am,
No complaints were ever made to us regarding that report.
Why this is being done now is, of course, perfectly clear to me. There are several goals here:
To lean once again on strong and independent Moscow City Duma candidates, showing everyone else: want to take an independent position? Here’s your example—show searches, even at your wives’ parents’ homes. The only candidate acceptable to us is a puppet who criticizes only where and when permitted. You’ve been given approved parties and approved topics? Then stick to those.
2. (Very important) To destroy online donations as a way of financing election campaigns. The Kremlin thought we would raise a few hundred thousand rubles this way, but we raised millions from thousands of people. This greatly alarmed the Kremlin riffraff, who believe they must have total control over the opposition’s finances. You’re not allowed to raise money from ordinary citizens: they’ll point you to an oligarch, and you’ll take a little from him as long as you stay obedient.
A broader fight against electronic payment systems in general. They categorically dislike a world in which ordinary citizens can transfer money to one another without leaving their computers. And even more so a world in which citizens can collectively chip in for something in an organized way. Let me remind you that the FSB first began obstructing the collection of Yandex.Money donations for RosPil (Navalny’s anti-corruption project) back in 2010.
To discredit Lyaskin and Yankauskas on the eve of the election. To get a fresh pretext for churning out endless reports saying, "Investigators are looking into embezzlement in Navalny’s campaign headquarters".
This morning in Lyaskin’s kitchen
And in general: to spread fear, to show who’s boss, to make everyone afraid of them—how dare they, who do they think they are. All of that.
What should our response be? To help those whom these villains and scoundrels are ruthlessly persecuting. If they don’t like Ashurkov, Lyaskin, and Yankauskas, who are part of the For Moscow coalition, then we need to help them and others like them—independent people.
Really, read these five points again and tell yourself: in my case, they will not achieve their goal.
Update: It has become known that searches are also underway at the Yandex.Money office