— Crabs and lobsters! Apartments and five-star hotels! Schools in New York and luxury cars! The secret books of an anti-corruption crusader!
NTV has cooked up a new “investigative film” about me. Here’s its absolutely wonderful promo — take a look.
They work fast: just the other day they were running after me through Domodedovo Airport with a camera, shouting, “Alexei, why are you hiding your income?!” — and now it’s already in the film.
Well, our campaign is moving along quite briskly, so they have to respond somehow.
I don’t really understand why the Kremlin is pushing this line about “the millions of the unemployed Navalny” and “hiding his income.”
I published my first declaration four years ago during the Coordinating Council elections. I wasn’t required to, but since they demanded it, I published it.
A detailed income and asset declaration was published before the mayoral election; it’s still posted on the election commission’s website.
Apparently, since the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) uncovers secret assets belonging to officials, they’re desperate to catch me in something similar. Can’t find anything? No problem — just make it up.
But still, since they’re going to blast this out to an audience of millions, let me at least lay it all out with actual numbers for my smaller YouTube audience: how much I earned and what I own.
What my income consists of.
Navalny as a sole proprietor — I registered it after I was stripped of my attorney status because of the Kirovles verdict.
Now it’s extremely difficult for me to do anything significant in criminal cases, and I definitely can’t act as defense counsel in court (although I do have a client like that), but any other legal work is no problem. I sign a standard civil-law contract and get paid.
Most importantly, not having attorney status does not prevent me in any way from working as counsel at the ECHR, and that is now becoming my main area of work.
I asked my accountant to send me the income information for 2016 that will go into the declaration. Here it is:
So in 2016 I earned 5.2 million rubles and paid 244,000 rubles in taxes. Once I officially file the declaration, I’ll publish it, but those are the numbers it will contain.
In addition, as you know, I received compensation from the Justice Ministry for winning a case against the government at the ECHR — 3,419,917 rubles.
So my income for 2016 was 8,692,953 rubles.
I also own some shares, but I very much doubt that the total annual dividends from them amount to more than 15,000 rubles, so we can ignore that.
Assets:
- a 78-square-meter (about 840 sq ft) apartment in Maryino. - my wife owns a car — a 2012 Ford Explorer.
Right now I live in a rented apartment. I wrote that I wanted to move into a four-room apartment and was looking for one. I found one, and I live there now. But it’s nowhere near the “elite city center” — it’s not far from Avtozavodskaya metro station.
So, as you can see, it’s not a very long list.
I don’t have any luxurious trips abroad either, because I don’t travel abroad at all. For the past five years I’ve been barred from leaving the country, and I don’t have a foreign passport. For vacations, it’s Karelia, Altai, and so on.
I don’t know what they mean in the promo when they talk about “schools in New York” — that is 100% a lie. My children go to an ordinary school in Maryino. The same one they’ve always attended.
I hope this was useful information. After all, I do want to lay claim to the title of “the most transparent politician in the country.”
And one more important thing, by the way. An annual income of 5 million rubles is no small amount, obviously. I’m not a poor man. But living on those “millions of mine” is precisely what gives me enormous motivation to fight corruption.
Let me explain: I earn more than most officials, even senior ones. So I know exactly what kind of lifestyle this sort of money can buy. For example, you sure as hell can’t buy a really good apartment with it. Not even with a mortgage. And then I look at these “public servants,” who earn less than I do but live in such a way that it’s perfectly obvious to me: a salary of 3 million, and another 333 in kickbacks.
Otherwise, where do all these huge apartments in the city center come from? The trips. The jewelry. It is completely impossible to afford all that on their legal income. Which means we have to look for the illegal income — and that’s exactly what we do.
Post the link to this video anywhere the Olgino trolls (pro-Kremlin online propagandists) are pushing the line that “Navalny has no income.”
Sign up to support my nomination.
In the beautiful Russia of the future, every politician’s income and spending will match.