The original post was published on 27 August 2013 at navalny.livejournal.com
At every meeting with voters, I am asked why I consider it so important for officials to publicly explain the sources of their wealth.
Yes, I do want to become the first mayor whose team members report to Muscovites not only on their income, but are also required to explain where particular assets came from if those assets (bank accounts, lifestyle) clearly do not match their declared income.
I am not the only one who understands how important and effective these rules are. For example, United Russia (Russia’s ruling political party) also understands perfectly well and is doing everything possible to prevent Article 20 from being ratified. They know exactly what it would mean for them.
Let us look at a specific case using the example of public official Sobyanin’s “team.”
Take Alexander Gorbenko, for instance:
http://www.mos.ru/authority/vice/6/
A rather useless bureaucrat whose name you most often hear in the context of “Moscow City Hall has banned such-and-such public event.” This is the very Gorbenko responsible for making sure Muscovites are barred from gathering in the streets unless it is to praise Putin and Sobyanin.
Gorbenko is also Sobyanin’s point man for lies and propaganda. He is the one running the massively loss-making Moscow TV channels TVC and Moskva-24, on which we spend about 7 billion rubles a year (roughly tens of millions of U.S. dollars annually), so they can tell us how wonderful Sobyanin is, how there is no traffic in Moscow, and how miraculous the clinics are, with no lines at all.
As Monsieur Gorbenko’s biography shows, he has been circling around budget money for 13 years now. Quite successfully, as you can see.
Moscow Region, Domodedovo District, the village of Bityagovo
Map: http://maps.yandex.ru/-/CVb45G4q
The hard lot of public service has brought Sobyanin’s deputy a splendid 2-hectare plot (about 20,000 square meters), complete with a huge beautiful house, landscaped grounds, a pond, and various outbuildings.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQMjViQkJfbDRhVWM/edit?usp=sharing purchased in 2006, when Gorbenko was working at the state-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta (the Russian government newspaper) http://www.mos.ru/authority/vice/6/
Several neighboring plots, with a total area of more than 4,000 square meters, are registered to Gorbenko’s son and wife: 808 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQQ3M4U2tjREk1Rkk/edit?usp=sharing 1,185 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQZHBwcjFiU2VjeU0/edit?usp=sharing 952 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQT0NLUVNMNzgxLUU/edit?usp=sharing 1,300 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQNGRoZmZxbUVIT3M/edit?usp=sharing They were purchased later, when Gorbenko was already “toiling away” on Sobyanin’s team.
Video from our wonderful quadcopter
http://youtu.be/CErhqAABDzs A review of public official Gorbenko’s declarations shows that although he has had a decent income (7 million rubles a year) since Muscovites started paying his salary out of their own pockets,
http://declarator.org/person/843/
http://www.mos.ru/authority/activity/citygov/index.php?id_14=24984
that income in no way explains such a luxurious life behind such a high fence.
To buy (or build) a property like this, public official Gorbenko would have had to neither eat nor drink for several years. And he certainly would not have had enough left for a Lexus LS 600H costing 5.7 million rubles — almost equal to his annual income.
An analysis of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities does not indicate that Gorbenko himself or his wife were involved in business. Perhaps they simply found buried treasure.
What I am getting at is that this kind of “public official,” this “Gorbenko,” instead of doing what his job requires and earning the large salary we pay him, spends his time ~~stealing~~ making money by dubious means.
That takes up 80% of his time: they come up with a scheme, talk it over, clear it, pay people off, carve it up, make sure no one else gets left out, and so on. Fraud requires administration too — and plenty of it.
The remaining 20% goes to banning rallies and instructing TV channels on exactly what kind of nonsense they should be pushing.
No wonder there is no time left to do any actual work.
And then we wonder why, with a budget of 1.6 trillion rubles, Moscow still has so many problems. Who is supposed to solve them when all efforts are focused on skimming off that 1.6 trillion?
I would very much like to hear public official Sobyanin explain what he thinks about his deputy’s disproportionate wealth. Would he perhaps like to dismiss him? Pending clarification of the circumstances.
As for the rest of us, there is only one path: if we want people at the head of the city who will finally start fighting corruption, and for whom the distinction between “official” and “unofficial” income is meaningless, then we need to join the election campaign right now.
No one else is going to make the city and the country better for you. People like these Gorbenkos are not afraid of one Navalny alone. When thousands of Navalnys take to the streets with their election campaign, that is when everything will change.
Sharing this post is encouraged. Citizens should know everything about the hardships of public service.
P.S. Furious Zhora from our Anti-Corruption Foundation, who takes every bureaucrat’s palace as a personal challenge, has created a special website where you can anonymously send us information about a public “servant’s” enormous estate, if you have such information.
It is simple. Go to the website, find on the map a property you know something about. Leave all the information you have.