I want to stress once again that the news about the postponement of the FSB bill that would classify officials’ real estate records should be discussed not in terms of “they postponed it,” but in terms of “they got what they wanted.”
What the Kremlin really wanted was to hide the property not of all officials in general, but of its own top mafia-like inner circle. They did it in a crude and illegal way: by censoring the registries. They simply deleted the names, and that was it. Even Rosreestr (Russia’s state real estate registry) admits that the law does not allow this, yet the names are gone.
Right now, you will not find in the registries Putin’s daughters, Putin’s son-in-law Shamalov (even though he is not an official), Shoigu, Rogozin, or many others. The ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) has written about this repeatedly.
So the FSB bill has simply lost its immediate urgency. Three years ago, to push through something illegal, they had to quickly switch on the “mad printer” — the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). Now even that is no longer necessary.
People