As you know, I do not recognize what are being called the “Moscow City Duma elections” as elections at all. For me, the tangible consequence of these elections is that some of my comrades who wanted to take part in them—and had every chance of being elected—have ended up under arrest, others were forced to leave the country, still others are facing fabricated criminal charges, and all of them together have been barred from the ballot by a filter through which Sobyanin allowed only those candidates to pass who have not the slightest chance of being elected.
I myself have been under arrest for six months, in part so that I would not go to meetings with voters and disturb this cozy, stage-managed electoral process.
But as many rightly point out, you cannot simply withdraw from the electoral process altogether! You have to do something, at least.
Okay, then let’s do the one thing these “elections” deserve.
Meet him, if you don’t already know him: this is Valentin Pavlovich Gorbunov.
He is a truly unique man. He has headed the Moscow City Election Commission and run the entire electoral process in Moscow since 1994 (!!!). That is, for 20 years.
And in general, as Valentin Pavlovich’s biography says, "he has been involved in elections since 1977 and has served on election commissions at various levels." Quite a man! I had only just turned one, and Valentin Pavlovich was already keeping a watchful eye to make sure voters unanimously supported the “indestructible bloc of Communists and non-party members” (a standard Soviet-era election slogan).
And every government has been happy with Valentin Pavlovich. Paraphrasing a classic line, one could say: he falsified elections under the Communists, he falsified them under Gorbachev, under Popov, under Luzhkov, under Sobyanin, under Yeltsin, and under Putin.
Since I know Valentin Palych personally to some extent, I should say that in person he is polite, proper, and courteous. That is probably exactly why he has lasted so long. It is one thing when some boor “tweaks” election results; it is quite another matter when it is done by a cultured, well-educated man.
All those famous videos that drove so many of us into the streets of Moscow in December 2011 are an illustration of Valentin Pavlovich Gorbunov’s many years of effort to create a system in which, in Moscow elections, under no circumstances can anyone win unless they have been permitted to win.
In that sense, Gorbunov can be called a leader of the protest movement—he is one of the people who drives others into the streets.
So, our contribution to the current electoral process is that we would like to say goodbye to Valentin Pavlovich Gorbunov.
The point is that under the law, the Moscow City Election Commission is a state authority, and its chairman is a person holding a public office of the city of Moscow. That means all the relevant restrictions apply to him. For example, neither Valentin Pavlovich nor his wife is allowed to hold foreign financial assets, securities, stakes in companies, and so on.
It is with regret that I must present documents indicating that Valentin Pavlovich Gorbunov’s family owns a company in the foreign country of Croatia, and that company appears to have been used to purchase real estate in the same country.
To begin with, let us establish the identity of the suspect:
From the most recent disclosure statement, we can see that Gorbunov has a wife and an apartment.
We look at the official extract for the apartment and confirm the exact names of the family members. We then check them against the housing database.
Are they the same people? They are. And from there, away from gloomy Moscow, where thanks to V.P. Gorbunov, “United Russia” always wins elections.
Free of charge, we go to the Croatian online business registry and in the “Zbirka isprava” section we look up IKA ASTRA d.o.o., registered in 2012. It contains the founders’ personal details, including address and date of birth. Here, for example, is the “Društveni ugovor” (something like the articles of incorporation).
So what do we see?
The company’s owners and founders are Natalya Gorbunova, born 05/02/1953 (his wife), and Anatoly Gorbunov, born 01/18/1984 (his son). Both list as their place of residence that same apartment on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Street.
And how is the Gorbunovs’ Croatian company doing? Maybe it was shut down long ago? Fortunately, there is no need to guess—we can simply look at the 2013 financial statements (in the “Financijska izvješća” section of the site).
Excellent. We can see how the company was doing in 2012 (Prethodna godina) and in 2013 (Tekuća godina). The Gorbunovs have seen a substantial increase in the MATERIJALNA IMOVINA category, which now shows the figure 2,430,898. Perhaps that is the number of “spiritual bonds” (a sarcastic reference to official Russian conservative rhetoric) transferred to safekeeping in Croatia, or the number of patriotism units Gorbunov earned over 20 years of running Moscow’s elections. Let’s check exactly. What does the magic of Google Translate tell us?
The Croatian business registry tells us, mercilessly, that the Gorbunovs are not merely unlawfully in possession of a Croatian company, but have also registered real estate under it worth 2.4 million Croatian kuna, or US$420,000. Needless to say, the Gorbunov family’s disclosure statement contains not a single mention of any foreign holdings.
We spent a couple of weeks trying to find the property itself, but so far we have not managed to locate it, much as we would have liked to entertain you with photographs as well. We will keep trying, and you can help us if you know Croatian—write to fbk@fbk.info if you are willing. But the lack of photographic proof of the property changes nothing: ownership of a foreign company is indisputable, and that is precisely what is explicitly prohibited.
So that there would be none of the usual excuses from Sobyanin’s crooks along the lines of “I got divorced” or “The lawyers forgot to file the paperwork”, we went to the trouble of obtaining THIS MORNING documentary confirmation on paper from a Croatian court, complete with all the necessary stamps and seals.
These certificates, with an apostille and translation, will be attached to a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s Office demanding the immediate removal of Valentin Pavlovich Gorbunov from his post, as required under the law “On Combating Corruption.”
The story is horribly symbolic. For 20 years, this man has been using falsifications to appoint for us the authorities we do not want and did not vote for. And all the while he has built himself a cozy nest in European Croatia, where he can peacefully spend his old age.
Here is the help we need in connection with this: Spread this information as widely as possible, so that Muscovites know better the man who ensures election fraud and the removal of unwanted candidates in their city. Post links, tell your friends and acquaintances. If you are a journalist, keep asking Sobyanin, Gorbunov, and the Prosecutor’s Office questions until you get all the answers. If you are not a journalist, ask those questions too whenever you have the chance. If you know Croatian well, write to us—we want to dig into a few more things. If you like what ACF is doing, go here and send us some money so that we can keep working. Thanks in advance to everyone.
That is our contribution to these elections. Sorry if it is not quite what you expected. As the elections are, so is the contribution.