A few years ago, an acquaintance of mine who worked in the police told me a story about taking part in a search of the apartment of an FSB general linked to customs fraud schemes.
According to him, there was so much cash in the apartment that they had to call in a *Gazelle* van (a common Russian light commercial vehicle) to haul it away. And the punchline was that once they had finally crammed all the money into the vehicle, its axle buckled. The *Gazelle* couldn’t handle the general’s money.
I listened, nodded, and thought: what nonsense. There couldn’t possibly have been that much money in an apartment. Who would keep three tons of cash at home?
Now I understand: it was a real story. If 8 billion rubles were seized from a police colonel — that is, $125,000,000, or 1,250 kilograms (about 1.25 metric tons; if the internet is to be believed, a bundle of $100,000 weighs exactly one kilogram) in $100 bills — then an FSB general could indeed have had three tons.
Besides, this police colonel headed an anti-corruption department, so professional ethics and the honor of an officer presumably kept him from taking as much as he possibly could — he was restraining himself. An FSB man had no such important constraint.
By the way, do you see that in one of the photos there’s a pink copy of the Criminal Procedure Code lying on top of the money? That makes the point perfectly clear: yes, we take billions, but the law comes first.
A lot is being written now saying that this money did not belong to Colonel Zakharchenko alone, but was part of an *obshchak* (a shared criminal cash pool). That seems entirely possible, because the case materials suggest one network involving the heads of Moscow’s Investigative Committee, the heads of the federal Investigative Committee, the country’s top *vor v zakone* (crime boss), and the Interior Ministry’s main anti-corruption directorate. Maybe some of those 8 billion also belonged to people like Bastrykin and Markin.
Still, it is obvious that there is more than one such *obshchak*. Public opinion was badly mistaken and seriously underestimated the scale of corruption in Russia.
After all, these are not even top-tier colonels and generals. They are deputy department heads, deputy chiefs of main directorates. Compared with federal ministers, their capabilities are nothing.
And now, by the way, Korzhakov’s recent remark that “money was delivered to Shuvalov by the truckload” no longer sounds insane.
And here is what I want to say: in the face of something like this, no one can seriously keep saying, “Fighting corruption is not a positive agenda. Fine, you fight it — and then what?”
Right now, the main economic issue under debate is how to further index pensions for retirees in Russia. It requires 200 billion rubles, and the government does not have that money.
The government does not have it, but Colonel Zakharchenko and his colleagues do. Twenty colonels like him would solve one of the country’s most important problems.
Nothing can or will develop when some obscure devils in uniform, sitting in offices, are able to siphon 8 billion rubles at a time out of the economy.
Let me remind you of my programmatic article from 2012:
That is exactly how it is, isn’t it?