Today the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) effectively blocked a bill banning public officials from owning property abroad. And it was United Russia that did it—the self-proclaimed main fighters against the West. Quite a striking case of schizophrenia.
Personally, I’m not a fan of this bill—the problem isn’t that a public official bought an apartment in Bulgaria or a house in Spain, but that he is under no obligation to explain to us where he got the money for the purchase. Basically: none of your business.
At best, you get the proud reply: “I declared my income.” Okay, you declared it—but can we find out what kind of income it was, and where it came from? Why did a housewife suddenly receive 100 million rubles (about 1 million USD)? - No, you can’t.
That is why the focus should be on passing our bill under Initiative #20.
But what I want to talk about now is the idiocy of it all. United Russia blocked a law banning officials from owning property abroad, yet pushed through a law banning foreign financial instruments and accounts in foreign banks.
Because we all understand perfectly well that in practice this is impossible—you cannot own a house abroad and not have an account in a foreign bank.
Utilities, repairs, services, and the purchase itself, after all. You always need a bank account, and you can almost never get by using a card from a Russian bank.
Take, for example, Senator Klishas’s house in Switzerland:
I will never believe that he bought it and has been maintaining it for several years without an account in a foreign bank. So there must be some kind of workaround: lawyers, relatives, front people.
And it’s the same for everyone else. So what is the point of your bans if you yourselves are pushing officials to violate them?
This idiotic combination—property is allowed, but a bank account is not—simply forces officials to break the law.
It is safe to say that 99% of public officials who own real estate abroad are violating—or circumventing—the ban on foreign financial instruments and accounts in foreign banks.
It’s like the old Russian joke about the cross necklace and the underwear (a saying meaning: either be consistent or don’t pretend). Either allow everything, or ban everything.