About a year and a half ago, we learned that Artyom Chaika (the son of Prosecutor General Chaika) owns a hotel in Greece. We decided to dig into it.
The first surprise came when we found out that no one even knows what he looks like (everything online labeled "Artyom Chaika" is not actually him).
The second surprise came when we realized that the hotel was far too expensive for the scale of corruption one would normally expect from a prosecutor's son.
And when we found out with whom, and with what money, Artyom Chaika bought this hotel, our hair stood on end. Twenty times we said, "No, this can't be true—they're from the prosecutor's office," and then we decided to carry out a thorough investigation and tell you about the money of Prosecutor General Chaika's family.
That was the beginning of the case that became the biggest investigation we have ever conducted. In Greece, Switzerland, Irkutsk, Krasnodar Krai, and Kaluga. We studied offshore documents and property registries, and searched for customs declarations for steamships privatized 13 years ago. We looked for relatives of murdered people and spoke to those whose businesses had been taken away. We examined, by name, the biographies of everyone helping the Chaikas organize their criminal schemes—from Swiss lawyers to prosecutors in the Moscow region and Artyom Chaika's former classmates. Throughout those eighteen months, many people helped us: they photographed the Chaika family's luxury properties in Europe, spoke with neighbors, employees working for the Prosecutor General's family, and people who had crossed paths with Chaika over the past 15 years. Many thanks to these brave and courageous people who helped us.
Today, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) presents to you, with both pride and sadness, the investigation "Chaika." With pride, because we were able to describe and document in considerable detail this "business," built on extortion, kickbacks, and corporate raiding. Going all the way back to 1999.
With sadness, because how can anyone feel happy after learning that the children of your country's prosecutor general do business with murderers, and that in a case about them seizing someone's business, you have to read a description of a "ligature mark."
There was so much material that we could have written a book. But you understand, no bookstore would carry that book. So we made a film instead:
And alongside the film, there is a large interactive feature with far more detail, all the documents, and many interesting specifics about how our investigation was conducted. We thought that might interest you too: where things come from and how one fact or another gets uncovered.
If you prefer watching, watch.
If you prefer reading, read.
This investigation is tremendously important, in my view, and I am asking all of you to help spread it. You can see what is happening right now. The crafty Kremlin has completely pushed discussion of any domestic Russian issues out of the news agenda. The whole country—from political analysts to grandmothers sitting outside their apartment buildings—has been discussing Ukraine, then the United States, then Merkel, then the Minsk agreements, then France, then Syria, and now Turkey.
This is being done entirely on purpose: it is obvious that we have problems more important than Lord Curzon, the Entente, Erdoğan, and some Assad living thousands of kilometers from our borders. You cannot fix the collapse of housing and public utilities or corruption with a TV segment saying "Obama is an idiot," so they have to keep inventing wars in order to say: now is not the time to talk about corruption, the enemy is at the gates, Damascus—a holy city for Russians—is about to fall.
We want everyone to watch this film. Then people will understand more quickly what kind of catastrophe is really unfolding in Russia: the rule of the worst and the destruction of the state.
Helping us is simple: send the links to your friends and acquaintances, and recommend that they watch/read it. Drop the links into your messenger chats or your company mailing list. Share them on your social networks and write a few words about what you yourself think about it.
In our country, 50 million people go online every day. Can we really not get our story to 20 million of them? This blog is read by 1.3 million users a month—five minutes of effort and 10 clicks from each person, and we will reach our goal.
Don't be lazy. Remember: all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
In conclusion, here is the Conclusion. This section closes our longread. It really is "long," so in case you do not make it to the end:
We will not have achieved our goal if your personal conclusion from what you have read is simply that we exposed the corrupt family of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. For us, this is more a story about the failure of the modern Russian state—about the fact that in its current form it cannot serve the people or fulfill the purposes for which it is supposed to exist. It is impossible to seriously suppose that the prosecutor's family's "business," with all its remarkable features—from corporate raids to mysterious murders, from state contracts to business partnerships with the Tsapok gang (a notorious criminal gang behind a mass murder in Kushchyovskaya)—could have gone unnoticed by the country's political leadership, including President Putin. And it is equally obvious that within the prosecutor's office itself, the Investigative Committee, and the FSB, many of the facts in our investigation are well known. That is precisely the problem: everyone knows everything and stays silent. More than that, this is the authorities' deliberate choice: for them, a prosecutor who does business with the Tsapoks is preferable to an honest prosecutor. Why would an honest prosecutor cover up the crimes of his superiors and colleagues? With a corrupt one, there is always a mutual interest. For us, however, all this means not just luxurious country houses for generals and their sons, but the depravity of the law enforcement system as a whole. How can an ordinary person ever get justice here? The assumption is that people vested with great power should be at least somewhat better than the average citizen—more decent, more law-abiding, more conscientious. But what we have instead is that at the top of the prosecutorial pyramid sit real monsters who have committed crimes more dangerous than those committed by 90% of the people in prison. The very idea of fighting corruption looks simply ridiculous if the wife of a senior prosecutor is in business with the wives of gangsters and murderers. These people are mired in corruption to a degree far greater than the rest of society. What example can they possibly set for us? Can we seriously condemn doctors who take money from patients and demand that they reform, when the country's top guardian of the law is involved in theft and gangsterism on such a scale that it is hard to believe at first? The people implicated in the most notorious mass murder case of recent years (the "Tsapok gang") were making money together with the leadership of the prosecutor's office—against that backdrop, any traffic cop taking bribes looks like a role model. Imagine a young person who comes to work in the prosecutor's office in order to serve the people (don't laugh, such people do exist). How much professional zeal will he have left after carrying out, a couple of times, orders to assist in a corporate raid, given by the head of his agency's anti-corruption (!) department? A decent person in this system would not merely be a black sheep—he would become an outcast and would either be pushed out or become part of the mafia. The system has only one function: to serve the interests of corrupt officials. That is a large and difficult job—to protect "your own" and punish "outsiders." To open criminal cases against enemies and close them for friends. The system has no concern for us, ordinary people. At best, we are an annoying obstacle to making money by any available means. This is what state failure looks like. We have a government that has become not merely a harmful and expensive superstructure, but a concentration of everything most immoral and shameless. And yet we will still end on an optimistic note. Recognizing the system's failure and depravity is the first step toward creating a new system. We are different people, with different experiences and often differing political views, but we are certainly united by one thing: we do not accept the establishment in Russia of the "rule of the worst." Russia and its people deserve a normal government and a state where the law is not something twisted to suit whoever applies it, but a rule established in the public interest and binding on everyone—from students to prosecutors. It is entirely possible that corruption can never be eliminated completely, but we believe the time will come when it will be shrinking rather than growing. The Anti-Corruption Foundation strives to do everything it can to bring that time closer. Right now, we demand the immediate resignation of Prosecutor General Yury Ya. Chaika and the entire leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office, as well as a large-scale anti-corruption investigation into Yury Chaika, Artyom Chaika, Igor Chaika, and the other figures in this case. We will do everything we can to ensure that as many citizens of the Russian Federation as possible learn about our investigation and join our demands. We will be glad if you help us in this work. Our future depends only on what we do in the present and on each person's personal contribution to that effort. The main thing is that the truth is on our side, and that means victory will be ours. https://chaika.navalny.com/