The Anti-Corruption Foundation continues to send out petitions demanding an investigation into Deputy Mayor Liksutov’s offshore company.
More precisely, we have already checked everything, and the fact that he possesses assets prohibited for a public official is indisputable (even Liksutov does not deny it). What matters now is that this be officially established and lead to the only possible outcome—the one laid down by Sobyanin, Liksutov, Putin, Zheleznyak, and their whole United Russia gang that has seized power: dismissal from public service.
As we said, a request will also be sent to every deputy of the Moscow City Duma:
It is precisely because of these requests that people sometimes ask: why are you so obsessively and dogmatically fixated on Liksutov, when he’s better than (insert any name here)? Like a maniac.
And although the last few paragraphs of the original post answer this question, I would like to answer it once again. It needs to be answered because someone very important to me has voiced his doubts. His name is Dmitry Butskov.
This short text—though in some sense a statement of principle for me—is addressed to him. It is about dogmas.
Many people think this is an occasion for some kind of polemic with the well-known Liksutov admirer Maxim Katz. That is not quite true. Or rather, there could be as much polemic here as you like, and the debate would be interesting, but Maxim has already taken a clear position:
That position is unacceptable to me, but understandable. Our entire system of power is now built on “everything for friends, the law for enemies,” so there is nothing original or especially shocking here. I can only regret that advancing such a position requires claiming that the nominal value of a share in equity (€217) is the same as the value of the stake in the company. I am no longer going to prove anything to Maxim.
But Dmitry Butskov is a different matter. I will try to explain it to Dmitry. More than that, I owe Dmitry an explanation.
I do not know him personally, but when Yulia was selectively reading me comments on the post about Liksutov’s offshore company, his comment mattered.
https://twitter.com/2bearcoolyes/status/471320573558423553
At first I said: Well then reply to him, “you don’t support this because you’re for corruption, and I’m against it”. Fortunately, Dmitry does not have many tweets, and after scrolling for two seconds Yulia said, “No, he’s definitely not pro-corruption”:
That changes things.
Who should I explain this to, if not Dmitry, when I work for people like Dmitry and alongside people like Dmitry?
Look, Dmitry: At every meeting with voters, I was asked the same question: All right, they’re crooks. But how will you prove that you won’t become a crook too, like everyone else?
And every time I gave the same answer: I cannot prove that in any way. What I can prove is that I will build a system in which you can throw crooks out of power. That system will be able to throw me out too. That is the main guarantee. If I become a crook, you will find someone who does the job better.
Christian Wulff, the former president of Germany, took out a €500,000 loan from the wife of his friend, the millionaire Egon Geerkens. Wulff concealed this fact from the country’s parliament. In addition, the politician’s friend, film producer David Groenewold, paid €753 for Wulff’s hotel stay and restaurant dinner. The German public regarded this as bribery, and Wulff was forced to resign.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the former German defense minister, became defense minister at the age of 37. He was considered one of the likely candidates for the post of German chancellor. In February 2011, Guttenberg was accused of plagiarizing at least 15 passages in his dissertation. The minister admitted that his work contained serious citation errors. He publicly renounced his doctorate in law, and was then officially stripped of the title. Two weeks after the scandal began, Guttenberg resigned.
Jacqui Smith, the former UK home secretary, received about £116,000 in public funds as reimbursement for renting a house where her sister actually lived. She also hired her own husband as her assistant on a salary of £40,000 a year. This became public knowledge, and Jacqui Smith was forced to resign.
There are many such examples, and we all like them. We, normal people, want to live in a country where officials are thrown out for corruption or unethical conduct. We are simply shocked—in a good way—that somewhere there is a society that considers it antisocial and unacceptable for an official to accept a dinner and a hotel stay worth €750.
Sooner or later, Russia too will climb out of the Middle Ages in which it now finds itself. And here too, ministers will be removed from office for plagiarism in their dissertations. The question is: will it happen in our lifetime? In the lifetime of our children? Our grandchildren?
Dmitry, like you, I want Russia to become a normal European country with European political traditions within my lifetime. That is why I try to pay more attention to principles than to surnames.
It does not matter to me whether it is Liksutov, Kapkov, Sobyanin, or Ivanov. The Anti-Corruption Foundation does not pick cases as if shopping in a supermarket; we publish what we have managed to find.
For example, I have spoken to Kapkov once in my life—in a joint interview with Afisha—and I can say that he is a very pleasant person to talk to, one who says all the right things. So should I now hold back material on Kapkov (whom, incidentally, I have never written about) if our investigations department finds something on him? I do not think that by doing so I would be living up to the standard of conduct expected of a politician to whom you have donated money.
In our society we have Liksutov fans, Sobyanin fans, Kapkov likers, Nikiforov fans, and even a couple of Shuvalov friends. There are officials who say the right things. Putin says them too. And he even does some right things. So what now? Are we supposed to forgive them corruption, hidden assets, stolen dissertations, and constant lying?
A minister who lies and hides offshore assets cannot be a good minister. He may be a good expert, businessman, family man, and someone’s friend, but he can no longer properly serve society and the state, because by his behavior he causes fundamental harm to the public interest.
Are you prepared to trade the value of the basic principles of public service for the value of non-binding expert declarations? I am not.
Of course, one can get rid of these dogmas and take a more tolerant view of abuses. But would that be a step toward creating a system (see my answer at the meeting with voters) that throws crooks out of power? No, it would be a step toward strengthening the current system of negative selection. A step toward cementing a system in which the culture minister has 3 (three) stolen doctorates. I do not want to take that step, and Dmitry, I ask you not to take it either.