It's nice to think of yourself as a VIP client of something, at least. For example, I'm clearly a VIP client of the bailiff service: they do everything quickly, and on Monday they're already coming to my home to inventory and seize my property.
(this is according to my lawyer, Vadim Kobzev)
And yesterday they banned me from traveling abroad, although that measure is obviously unnecessary—recently, a court already barred me from being issued an international passport.
All of this is because of the Yves Rocher case, in which the Zamoskvoretsky District Court granted a civil claim by the company MPK for 4.5 million rubles (the company itself told the court that it had found no damages; the amount was calculated by the investigator and cannot be substantiated by the company's accounting records).
As you may remember, right after MPK, Kirovles woke up with a civil claim in the 2013 case. During the trial they did not file any claim—because it would have looked too ridiculous—but times are different now, and the authorities in the Kirov region are happy to play lackey for Putin, Volodin, the FSB officers, or whoever is in charge of this. Kirovles's claim is for as much as 16 million rubles, and I won't be able to pay that off anyway.
But those 4.5 million rubles in the Yves Rocher case are a different matter. As you can imagine, I have not the slightest desire to pay under a fabricated case, but Oleg is serving time in connection with it, and "failure to compensate the damages" could serve as a formal basis for denying him parole (though we have no particular illusions—Oleg has already been given six disciplinary penalties).
So as soon as enforcement proceedings began over these 4.5 million rubles, I immediately paid almost all my savings, and another 0.9 million rubles was taken from a frozen account. That meant I paid about 3 million right away, and for the rest I requested a five-month installment plan (the request will be considered by the Zamoskvoretsky District Court).
You'd think that's not a debtor but a dream case! But, as I said, I'm a VIP client. Usually, travel restrictions—and even more so property seizure—happen months or years after debt collection begins. In my case, it took less than a month.
Well, it's interesting. A new experience in life. Before this, even though I'm a lawyer, I had only a vague idea of how the procedure worked. All I knew from the media was that bailiffs seize cats, pigs, and children's benefits.
I'll see how it happens. I don't have any cats or pigs, but I do have a television, and Dasha has a hamster named Zoya. She (Zoya) bites, by the way. I'm warning you in advance so there won't be any headlines like: Navalny set a rabid hamster on the bailiffs.