I got home from work. There was a whole show going on in the entryway: a bailiff, two young women with a camera rolling—filming me—and two FSSP special forces officers in little berets. They said they had come to inventory and seize my property. This was at 8:30 p.m., late in the evening, considering that bailiffs are only allowed to act until 10 p.m., and inventorying and seizing property is a drawn-out, hours-long hassle involving official witnesses.
As you may remember, the bailiffs had previously said that the seizure would take place on Monday at 4 p.m., but an hour and a half before the appointed time they called everything off and never showed up. We had specifically agreed on a time when the children would not be home, but the lawyer would be. After all, the law explicitly states that “the debtor has the right to propose a time convenient for him to the bailiff.” But it is obvious that their goal is something else entirely: no lawyer, but children in the apartment. Nighttime is ideal for that.
And most importantly: they want to seize property over the “Yves Rocher case.” The debt is 4.5 million rubles; I have already paid 3 million, and for the remaining 1.5 million rubles I asked the court for an installment plan. My application is due to be heard TOMORROW at the Zamoskvoretsky District Court in Moscow. If the installment plan is granted, then there is no need for any seizure. But then they would not be able to report back to Putin: just as you ordered, Vladimir Vladimirovich, we are making life miserable for Navalny—we inventoried his property at night, in front of the whole family, and even took away Zoya the hamster.
So of course I turned around and left the building. If they had forced their way in while I was in the apartment, there would have been nothing I could do—but of my own free will, I am not going to let my children watch a performance involving special forces in their room, rummaging through their things.
I feel stupid—like a teenager who has run away from home. My wife, inside the apartment guarded by bailiffs, feels even more ridiculous, but she writes: to hell with them, don’t come back.
Let them come during the day—when the lawyer is there and the children are not.
P.S. As I wrote above, bailiffs are entitled to inventory property (as a general rule) from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Just now, lawyer Kobzev informed me that the chief bailiff of Moscow, by personal decision—at 10 p.m. exactly—has made an exception for citizen Navalny. In his apartment, inventory may be carried out at night. The list of exceptions under the law is below; you can decide for yourselves which clause supposedly applies to me.