Tomorrow, the Lyublinsky District Court will hold a hearing on a lawsuit filed by Moscow Deputy Mayor Liksutov against me, Georgy Alburov, and the Anti-Corruption Foundation, in which Liksutov will try to obtain compensation from us for the “moral damage” we allegedly caused him by publishing this document:
So, Liksutov has valued his suffering at 1.5 times more than a human life after information was disclosed about his ownership of an undeclared offshore company—more than the life of any of the 23 passengers killed in the metro crash under the authority of this wonderful official (and another young woman died in the hospital this morning). The lack of independence of Moscow’s courts is well known, and I have no illusions about the outcome, but this time the case is made worse by the fact that Liksutov has demanded closed court proceedings:
The crook understands that the court can hand down any ruling it wants, but everyone present in the courtroom, including journalists, will see perfectly clearly who is in the right here.
We have nothing to hide, we are confident that we are right, and we will demand not only that the hearing be open, but also that video recording be allowed, as it was during the Rudensky lawsuit. There is little hope of that, but we will try.
In any case, it is extremely important for us to prove to you that we are right. That is why we have prepared a small and very easy-to-understand website for you:
It lays out the whole story in a simple, accessible, and clear way.
It also contains five questions for Liksutov that he absolutely does not want to answer. They cover the offshore companies, the conflict of interest, and his divorce from his wife, Tatyana Liksutova, among other things.
Take a look—it’s interesting.
I’ll quote just one of those questions here, because I was amused to see Liksutov write in the text of his lawsuit, “No one ever asked me anything or requested clarification.” Well, here we are asking:
Some time ago, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a database of beneficial owners of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. That database also includes our friend with the beaver-fur collar.
We are asking Liksutov, and we ask members of the media to ask him as well: is this true or not? Does Deputy Mayor Liksutov own (or did he previously own) the company SERMOLENT EQUITIES INC, which holds 5% of the shares in Transmashholding OJSC?
Otherwise, when we produce documents showing that it does, Liksutov will start putting on the same act again about the “divorce,” the “lawyers made a mistake,” and so on. Let’s settle right now whether this is—or was—the case.
In short, I would be very grateful to everyone who reads this and helps spread it as widely as possible. It will take you only a few seconds, and it would be a huge help to us.
To conclude, I am publishing not just a certified document, but an apostilled certificate from Cyprus, which we will present in court tomorrow and hand over to the prosecutor’s office, which told us that it was ready to conduct a review but needed the certificate to bear an apostille. You need one? Here you go.
This document fully and conclusively confirms that Liksutov should not be suffering any moral anguish because of my post: the document I published was genuine.
Of course, I would like to go through Liksutov’s lawsuit point by point—it consists of lies to the tune of 146% (a Russian political meme meaning “absurdly, blatantly false”)—but it would be unwise to do that before the hearing and help this con man. We’ll break it down after the session.
In the meantime, read http://express.navalny.com and help spread it. The country should know its heroes.