Things are stable here. Today we are suing Prosecutor General Chaika for the fourth time. And this time, in four Moscow courts at once.
Let me remind you that this mafia boss in a prosecutor’s uniform first called our investigation “commissioned”. Then, in an open letter published in Kommersant, he claimed that the investigation had not been produced by the ACF, but by “Browder on orders from Western intelligence services”.
A classic case where we have every reason to sue and absolutely no way to lose, because the only evidence Chaika could possibly produce for his nonsense about a “commissioned hit” would be a handwritten note saying: “We, CIA spies, instruct our agent Browder to smear the honest prosecutor Chaika, his family, and his associates by forcibly registering a whole lot of property in Russia and abroad in their names, as well as a joint company with the Tsapok gangsters.” State Department seal. Obama’s signature. A photo of Brzezinski attached with a paper clip.
Nevertheless, Moscow courts have refused three times to accept our claim.
The first time, they said that Chaika is not a person but the Prosecutor General, and therefore claims cannot be filed at his place of residence.
The second time, they said that I personally had no right to sign my own lawsuits and that special powers of attorney were required.
The third time, yesterday, they said they had not noticed the surname “Navalny” in the letter to Chaika, even though it is mentioned there four times, including once in the very first sentence.
As you can see, the signal sent by the Kremlin through the court system is perfectly clear: we do not want a trial where you will publicly tear apart our dear little gangster Prosecutor General.
We do not accept that, and we are continuing to press our case. We are using a legal mechanism that should make it even harder to reject our claim. It sounds absurd, I admit: it was already impossible to reject us before, so now it should be even more impossible.
We are relying on a ruling by the Plenum of the Supreme Court, which stated that in cases involving the protection of honor and dignity, the defendant may be both the media outlet and the author of the contested statement. In such cases, jurisdiction is determined by the plaintiff—that is, by us.
We are filing suit against Prosecutor General Chaika and RBC in the Gagarinsky District Court of Moscow.
Against Prosecutor General Chaika and *Vedomosti* in the Ostankinsky District Court of Moscow.
Against Prosecutor General Chaika and *Kommersant* in the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow.
Against Prosecutor General Chaika and TV Rain (*Dozhd*) in the Ostankinsky District Court of Moscow.
Against Prosecutor General Chaika and *Slon* in the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow.
Against Prosecutor General Chaika and *Echo of Moscow* in the Presnensky District Court of Moscow.
I apologize in advance to these respected media outlets for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, we are forced to make them nominal defendants in order to compel the courts to accept our claims and, more generally, to try to find a court willing to hear our case.
On the other hand, I am sure this will also be of interest to the media outlets themselves, since it gives them access to the case materials and allows them to remain part of the proceedings even if, in order to protect the crook, the court declares the hearing closed, as happened in the Liksutov case.
Once the claim is accepted, we will, at the media outlet’s request, either remove it from the list of defendants or leave it in if it wants to remain in the case. Needless to say, we are making no financial claims against them.
This is the kind of legal circus we have to stage just to make the courts do anything at all. Many thanks to Ivan Zhdanov and all the ACF lawyers for this work.
By the way, note that the “Chaika case” has started actively making its way into the Western press. At first we could not get that to happen because, as correspondents explained to us, it is hard to explain to readers there what a “Prosecutor General” is and how something this absurd could even be possible—that the leadership of the prosecutor’s office is linked to a gang of murderers. The story seems so wild and fantastical that it sounds more like something out of Africa than Russia, even taking the country’s well-known level of corruption into account.
A full page in Italy’s *La Stampa*
Oksana Baulina prepared a translation for Open Russia
A two-page spread in *Libération*