Sergei Semyonovich,
On the night of February 9 to 10, the Moscow city authorities carried out a mass demolition of buildings in various parts of the city. According to information from Moscow City Hall, the reason for the demolition was that these structures had been built without authorization and that their owners lacked the necessary title documents.
On February 10, the following post was published on your official account on the social network VKontakte (Russia’s largest social media platform) (https://vk.com/mossobyanin?w=wall265870743_15755), clearly expressing your political and legal position regarding the legality of the demolished structures and the documents pertaining to them:
As follows directly from your statement, you, as head of the executive branch of the city of Moscow, consider the ownership documents for the demolished properties to have been obtained unlawfully, by what you called a “fraudulent” means.
Such documents are issued by government authorities of the Russian Federation, including bodies under your authority. Therefore, it is impossible to obtain ownership documents by “fraudulent means” except through criminal collusion with government officials.
Your statement directly implies that, in the course of each such “fraudulent” procedure for obtaining ownership documents, official crimes were committed under Articles 290 (Taking a bribe), 201 (Giving a bribe), 286 (Abuse of official powers), 293 (Negligence), and others of the Criminal Code.
In light of the above, I demand:
- that you provide me with, and publish for public access, information on appeals made by Moscow City Hall government bodies and Moscow local self-government bodies to the law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation for the purpose of initiating criminal cases against the officials who arranged the issuance of these “fraudulent documents.”
I demand that the above information be provided and published for each of the 104 real estate properties included on the demolition list.
If no such appeals were sent to law enforcement agencies, then I regard such inaction by Moscow City Hall, and by you personally, as complicity in criminal activity aimed at the unlawful issuance of “pieces of paper certifying ownership obtained by fraudulent means.”
Moscow resident A. A. Navalny
This letter has been submitted officially. I await your response.