It was a chaotic but eventful day. In the morning, outside my building, I was met by a group in striped swimsuits, who showed me a paper ordering that I be forcibly brought in for questioning and then took me to the Investigative Committee with great fanfare.
At the Investigative Committee, there was a strange interrogation in the “case of the poster from the fence.” It all seemed fairly pointless, but the point became clear when I came out of the questioning and learned that the office was being searched and there was a “maski-show” (a colloquial Russian term for a forceful raid by security services).
About thirty people stormed in, some in masks and carrying assault rifles, others in plain clothes. The use of phones and laptops was forbidden. Calling lawyers was forbidden. Only two of them identified themselves: an investigator from the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee and a captain from the Interior Ministry, who said he was in charge of the operation.
Incidentally, the investigator turned out to be someone I knew—he had handled the case of one of my clients, whom I represented as a lawyer.
It turned out that the search, too, was being conducted as part of the “case of the poster from the fence,” which did not stop the Investigative Committee’s press office from publicly lying that the investigative actions were connected to the spending of funds transferred by donors.
According to the warrant, this whole horde of people was supposed to find in the office some kind of testimony and evidence concerning the fate of that ill-fated poster from the fence by the railway station in the city of Vladimir.
Instead, they seized all financial documentation, accounting records, ACF’s founding and charter documents, employees’ personnel files, several personal laptops and phones (not only from staff but also from people who just happened to be in the office), hard drives, flash drives, and, for some reason, a copy of “Cloud Democracy” (its co-author, Leonid Volkov, was in the office and was very pleased by that fact).
My safe disappointed the investigators as usual—it turned out to be empty.
The search lasted seven and a half hours.
All ACF employees were summoned for questioning.
Well, what can I say? Only the usual: it means we are doing everything right, and we will keep doing it.
There will be some difficulties in our work, but we will sort everything out.
I would also note separately that I personally, having arrived at the office an hour and a half after the search began, was pleased by the investigator’s words, “I haven’t seen such fierce resistance in a long time,” and by the way everyone at ACF conducted themselves—from the lawyers to the survey sociologists.
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