An interesting situation: last Friday, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court in Moscow denied a motion to make an official audio recording in the Yves Rocher case. They said there was no technical capability.
And today, Vedomosti (a Russian business daily) published the results of an independent investigation confirming that every Moscow court purchased and installed the Femida system, which is designed to make audio recordings of hearings. The Zamoskvoretsky Court is mentioned separately:
It’s hard to tell what’s going on: either the money was stolen and there is no Femida system at all—it exists only on paper—or they are doing everything possible to make sure there is no official record of the trial, because on Friday the first seven “prosecution witnesses” gave testimony in our favor.
And most likely both explanations are true: 20% of the cost was stolen, so none of the equipment works and no one turns it on—to the complete satisfaction of the judges. All perfectly in line with my formula for public finances, which Esquire used as the headline for “Navalny’s Rules of Life”.
But really, of course, it’s not funny. In courtrooms, people’s fates are decided in the most literal sense, and often matters of life and death are at stake. To make this system even a little more honest, hundreds of millions were spent on recording equipment—and yet it cannot be used.