7 pages, 14,000 characters, and possibly the longest explanatory letter ever issued by a Russian official of this rank.
I was expecting at least some lies.
- The leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office has no ties to the Tsapok gang;
- The Unified State Register of Legal Entities records are fake;
- My son is not involved in corporate raiding with the help of the prosecutor’s office;
- Artem Chaika does not own Swiss villas or Greek hotels, and he does not have a residence permit either;
- My younger son Igor wins state contracts worth billions of rubles fairly, in a competitive process;
- The Far Eastern Shipping Company was not seized, and its directors were not murdered;
- Artem Chaika did not lend my car, with its special pass, to Ingush racketeers;
and so on. You can distort one episode, ignore another, but at least make someone doubt: maybe Chaika is actually right?
Instead, we got a response about what a terrible businessman William Browder is. Literally. The first paragraph says this is not even Navalny’s film at all, but Browder’s and foreign intelligence services’. After that, it is nothing but how awful Browder is, how improperly he bought Gazprom shares, what a villain he is. And that Magnitsky had no legal education.
After several pages of nothing but Browder, they remember us again, with a comment that inflates the ego of our investigations department to unbelievable proportions:
And that was it. That was the response of Russia’s Prosecutor General to accusations of corruption and ties to criminal gangs. Browder-Browder-Browder-Browder-Browder-Browder.
Yevgeny Roizman, the mayor of Yekaterinburg, put it well: he would have been better off not writing anything at all.
I took the time to read all the commentary on Chaika’s article published so far, and even readers’ comments under the articles—in *Kommersant*, *Vedomosti*, *Ekho Moskvy*, and even, forgive me, *Izvestia* (their headline is excellent). There is no one who found this response even remotely convincing.
It is obvious to everyone: with his response, Yury Chaika confirms every accusation.
Some people write that he hired himself a terrible PR man. Terrible and stupid, yes, I agree. But that is not the point. The fact is, Chaika simply has nothing to say in response. Our evidence is indisputable and irrefutable. The argument here is not with us, but with the state’s own property register and the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. So he is forced to try to change the subject in such a pathetic and comical way.
Yury Chaika and the leaders of the Prosecutor General’s Office implicated in this case must be removed from office and made subjects of a large-scale investigation. The Anti-Corruption Foundation will push for this, and you can help us by telling more and more people about the “Chaika case.”