Interestingly, after Yury Chaika’s mysterious statement claiming that he knows who “commissioned” our investigation and would soon name them, that very commissioner began to reveal themselves, dropping the mask.
Typical examples:
So yes—the commissioner does exist, and it is you. The people who hate corruption and support our Foundation. It was with this money that we conducted the investigation, made the film, and produced the longread.
Many people, by the way, ask: “How much did it cost?” I can only break out the film’s budget: 250,000 rubles (about a few thousand U.S. dollars). In truth, a lot of things cost us nothing or very little—people help because they believe in the cause. Where someone else would rent a camera at the market rate, we get it at a steep discount.
The rest came from ACF’s general budget. You can view the latest annual report here. The investigations department worked on this case for a year and a half, while, as you know very well, continuing to publish other high-profile investigations the whole time. Once the evidence base was ready, the people working on content, design, and development joined in.
This is roughly what it looks like:
It looks intimidating, but don’t worry—it’s actually quite a small group of people, and many of them are unpaid volunteers. You can take a look at their faces here.
Judging by the response, we pulled it off, although this is not exactly typical work for us—under normal circumstances, this is what the media should be doing. In the Beautiful Russia of the Future (a slogan meaning a democratic, law-governed future Russia), there will be no need for an Anti-Corruption Foundation at all. Corruption will be uncovered by proper media outlets, public pressure will be raised by proper lawmakers, and it will be stopped by proper prosecutors.
But since the Beautiful Russia of the Future, sadly, has not yet arrived, we invite you to become the commissioners of the investigation against Chaika as well (we believe it has only just begun), and against the other crooks looting the country.
The best thing you can do is sign up for recurring donations. Even a small but regular amount allows us to plan and produce major projects like “Chaika.”
And it’s convenient for you because a) you set it up once, and the donations are charged automatically b) what matters most is not the amount, but the regularity c) it is completely safe. We do not store your card details and do not even see them—the bank’s payment gateway does not allow us to, even if we wanted to.
Since the investigation was released, we have received more than 1,000 donations, and only 10% of them are monthly. Our colleagues from charitable foundations boast that they are seeing growth specifically in regular payments (recurring payments, as they are properly called), but we are not doing so well with that yet.
Sign up: any monthly amount from you will greatly upset Yury Yakovlevich Chaika and his children.