We have not received the letter from the Swiss prosecutor’s office that Kommersant is reporting on today. The newspaper says that the Swiss prosecutors conducted a review but found nothing criminal in Artem Chaika’s actions:
Because of Catholic Easter, today is a public holiday in Switzerland, so we cannot confirm or deny anything. *Kommersant* is a peculiar newspaper—it does not charge much to tell a lie—but such a response from the prosecutor’s office is entirely possible, and that is a very sad fact showing that Russia has definitively become nothing more than an organizational and political cover for mafia clans.
How does this work? We file a complaint in Switzerland: the prosecutor general’s family is laundering criminal money, here are the facts, we demand an investigation.
Then they begin an investigation, and to open a case they need one key thing: recognition that a crime took place in Russia.
“Laundering” is a derivative offense. The primary issue is money obtained through criminal activity. You turn illegal money into legal money. For that, someone has to recognize that the money is illegal. In our case, that someone is Russia.
The Swiss write to Russia: your prosecutor general’s elder son is investing money in our country, and we have been given documents showing that he is connected to murderers through the wife of a deputy prosecutor general. Send us the documents.
Russia replies: we conducted an official investigation and refute the facts that were given to you. It has been established that the murderers themselves simply added prosecutors’ wives as founders of their companies by forging signatures.
Switzerland writes: it appears that this son of your prosecutor general may have been involved in the murder of a shipping company director. There was a suspicious death there.
Russia replies: oh no, not at all. There was no suspicious death. We checked—the prosecutor’s office was right to close the case.
Switzerland writes: we have been sent information saying that the prosecutor general’s children are grabbing a billion-ruble state contract through sham tenders.
Russia replies: we state with full responsibility that the billion-ruble state contract awarded to the prosecutor’s children is the most honest one in the world. They are successful businessmen.
And this dialogue continues until the Swiss prosecutor’s office finally replies: sorry, Russia and the Russian people, we would like to open a case against your crooks, but if you yourselves say everything they have is legitimate, then we cannot. You cannot launder honest money.
That is exactly the problem. Russia, as a state, proactively argues with froth at the mouth that all officials’ money taken to Switzerland is honest.
So, speaking in terms of a “first and second front”: the West cannot open a second front if Russia officially does not want it opened. More than that, it argues that under no circumstances should it be opened.
This has become the most important function of our state: to legalize criminal capital taken abroad. From Abramovich and Timchenko to, as you can see, Artem Chaika.
That is why it is so incredibly difficult to organize criminal prosecution of our crooks abroad.
Here is the latest quote from the lawmaker heading the anti-corruption committee:
That is exactly what the whole system is built on. Corruption is not corruption itself, but only what we—the corrupt—have recognized as corruption.
Irina Yarovaya, along with the entire ruling establishment, considers the capital of Artem and Igor Chaika legal, while their father considers Irina Yarovaya’s apartment on Tverskaya Street legal as well, even though it was bought with money from an unknown source.
Tomorrow we will try to obtain the documents that *Kommersant*—citing Chaika—is writing about. We will review the case materials and will quite possibly appeal their decision. But first we need to read everything; it is strange that Chaika has them while we still do not.
We will continue our work against the Chaikas in Switzerland in any case. Some German “hackers” also thought that they were beyond reach.
And in the beautiful Russia of the future, an entire department will be created within the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor’s office to bring back from the West capital stolen from Russia. Then a real second front will begin operating.
By the way, do register as voters in the primaries to form the opposition’s election list. Vote for those who want to become deputies in order to carry out anti-corruption work.