Some wag’s joke — “The only consequence of Navalny’s ‘Chaika’ investigation will be a criminal case opened against Navalny himself” — is rapidly becoming reality.
The Prosecutor General’s Office, represented no less than by First Deputy Prosecutor General Buksman, is sending letters like these to various organizations:
We know for certain about letters sent to Aeroflot and Rosneft. As I understand it, identical ones were also sent to VTB, Gazprom, Transneft, and every company where I investigated corruption and defended the rights of minority shareholders.
The subordinates of Yuri Yakovlevich Chaika, the Prosecutor General and mafia boss, are looking for any information at all. Absolutely anything.
Here, listen to the conversation between Elena Sergeyevna Legkova, mentioned in the letter (she is a prosecutor in the department of the Directorate for Oversight of Compliance with Anti-Corruption Legislation), and a lawyer for Aeroflot :)
She says that the inquiry is secret (03:19), that Navalny most likely tried to seize the entire Aeroflot shareholding (03:57), and also that Navalny is destabilizing Russia’s economy.
This conversation makes one thing fairly obvious: employees of the Prosecutor General’s Office have been instructed to cobble together some kind of criminal case against me, to find at least some kind of compromising material.
Here is a conversation between a Rosneft lawyer and Prosecutor Parshina, also mentioned in the letter. She says that very few people even inside the Prosecutor General’s Office know about the inquiry. The response must be sent by courier, and under no circumstances by mail.
This was fairly predictable: the Kremlin needs me convicted of a serious crime, which would give them grounds to keep me off the ballot. Never mind that the case will be fabricated so crudely that everyone will laugh. Give him a suspended sentence — that way, the person is not actually in prison on a fake case, so nobody gets too upset. But he is barred from running in elections, and there is a whole range of other petty but pleasing restrictions for old man Putin: from being denied an international passport to having to report to the criminal supervision inspectorate every two weeks.
After we won in the European Court on the “Kirovles case,” it stopped working the way the Kremlin needed it to. The ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) has also communicated the “Yves Rocher case”, which means that it too will soon be recognized as fabricated — especially since even the supposed victims in that case said they were not victims at all.
So what happens then, good heavens! (Putin exclaims. V.V. — Vladimir Vladimirovich.) Why, Navalny might be able to run in the 2018 presidential election!!! And he will run, and he’ll say all sorts of nasty things about us. And show pictures of our houses. And list the jobs in state-owned banks that we handed out to our children. And shout at every turn about little Kirill Shamalov — my billionaire son-in-law — in his shameless tongue.
So the Kremlin needs to cook up a new case. Urgently. And they have a very good man to carry it out. Someone with strong personal motivation: Yuri Yakovlevich Chaika, the Prosecutor General. He’ll conduct a nice little secret inquiry, prepare some handy material, and it will make for a fine case: destabilizing Russia and seizing controlling stakes in Aeroflot and Rosneft.
In short, peace is only something we can dream of. Expect more broadcasts from the courts, prosecutors’ offices, and investigative committees.
More adventures of the enemy of the state, basically.
P.S. RBC has confirmed the mailing “to many other companies.” If you know anything interesting about what is happening, write to us via Black Box.