When you're an arrogant official, you seize a public riverbank. When you're an arrogant Kremlin official, you seize not just the bank but the river too. That is exactly what the whole United Russia gang from our favorite Sosny dacha cooperative did: newly appointed State Duma speaker Volodin, United Russia secretary general Neverov, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration Prikhodko, and others.
By law, even any fence must end 20 meters from the bank of a river or lake. But these people actually registered the Istra River as their private property. However, the punishing hand of the Anti-Corruption Foundation caught up with them, and we are returning this national asset—the riverbank—to the public.
We made a new video about this remarkable and instructive case:
And here, as usual, we are posting all the supporting documents. Look—this is an official extract from Rosreestr (Russia’s state real estate registry), which shows that the Kremlin dacha cooperative illegally registered not only the riverbank as its property, but the river itself up to the midpoint.
And this is the result of our work. We gathered all the evidence and got Rosprirodnadzor (Russia’s federal environmental watchdog) to officially recognize the illegal seizure of the riverbank. Those responsible will face administrative penalties.
It shouldn’t be only us who have to hear, “Citizen, an administrative report is about to be drawn up against you.” Now Volodin and Neverov will hear it too.
You can read about our “Access to Water” project here, and view the table of current sites here. You can contact the ACF lawyers handling these cases through this email.