The FSB is once again stirring up hellish trouble around our Anti-Corruption Foundation.
I would really love to know which of our investigations is bothering them so much. We have several cases in the works, and if we knew which one they were trying to obstruct, it would make working on it even more interesting.
Or maybe it’s some of our other plans that are worrying them.
In any case, surveillance is becoming more and more noticeable, and the other day an amusing incident happened to ACF director Roman Rubanov.
Rubanov has a safe-deposit box at Alfa-Bank. He kept some personal documents there, nothing especially valuable. Like most people in that situation, he checked on it maybe once a year.
Then, during one of his routine visits to the bank, he was told that the box had been “opened by law enforcement.” After some correspondence with the bank, this is what emerged:
So it was the FSB that opened the box, apparently while searching for mythical money and/or materials related to our current investigations (which are very real). They seized nothing, because there was really nothing there to seize: insurance policies, coverage papers, and the same banking documents.
The bank did not provide the court order.
The inspection report lists the surname of the FSB representative—Kuzin—which tells me this is an old acquaintance of mine. The guy handles all the operational work on me. He’s shown up in every search, wiretap, and so on. He probably knows far more about me than I do myself. I can only imagine how tired he must be of learning the details of my rather monotonous and boring life.
He was also there during the search of Rubanov’s home two years ago.
Time passes, and the authorities’ assessment of our work remains as high as ever.
I should note that I’m sure opening the safe-deposit boxes of FSB generals would be a much more interesting exercise. You would definitely find more there than insurance policies.
It is unclear under which criminal case this break-in to the box was carried out. Roman went today to the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow, which had granted the authorization, and was told: we know nothing, we can say nothing, the FSB took all the materials.
Just wonderful. Among other things, it shows why corporate raids are so easy to carry out in Russia. Under some unknown case, you come to a bank, open whichever boxes you want, and look through whatever you need. You copy or seize the documents you want, and if the victim dares to go to court, they’ll be told, “We don’t have the materials—they took everything.”
This way, you can strip any business owner of either their money or their company. And any person can be deprived of either personal confidential documents or real estate.
But that’s just a brief digression.
For now, we want to state once again: instead of fighting corruption, Russia’s security services are protecting it by obstructing the work of our foundation and intimidating its staff.
I’m sure the security services understood perfectly well that we have no hidden money. After all, they have been monitoring our activities for years and know full well that all of ACF’s finances come from your donations. They were looking for investigation materials, helping officials. I have no doubt about that.
We will, of course, appeal these illegal actions, and we will carefully write down all those involved in a special little notebook. And we won’t be keeping that notebook in a safe-deposit box.
Any FSB officers who want to voluntarily tell us who is giving them illegal orders can share that information with us completely anonymously through Black Box.