Maria Gaidar’s home is being searched in connection with the “SPS case.” According to reports, the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service) is carrying it out.
Interesting how this very “SPS case” has become a universal tool for legitimizing searches, wiretaps, surveillance, and the seizure of equipment from opposition figures.
The case itself is highly mysterious. Let me remind you that it appeared at exactly the same time when four separate cases were opened against me in the space of a single week. There is no victim in it, and all the senior SPS figures—from Gozman to Belykh and Nemtsov—have said a hundred times that it is all nonsense. There are no defendants either (so far), which means no one has any way of obtaining even the most basic documents.
Nevertheless, it was precisely out of the “SPS case” that the “stolen poster case” grew. Under the “SPS case,” Ashurkov—who had never had anything to do with SPS—was searched and had his equipment seized. Dozens of people were questioned. Behind the “SPS case” stands a huge gang of FSB officers carrying out “operational work” against a large number of people.
Now that Gaidar has started seriously getting under Moscow City Hall’s skin on a range of issues—from parking to healthcare—bang, she gets a search “in the SPS case.” They will almost certainly seize her phone and all her computers. The obvious main purpose of these searches is to dig through them and look for “something interesting.”
As Kara-Murza rightly wrote: “The ‘SPS case’ is starting to sound more and more like the ‘case of the anti-Soviet Right-Trotskyist bloc’” (a reference to Stalin-era show trials).
Update: as I expected, they seized all the equipment.