That’s it: the Yandex.Money payment system has officially cut us off. As I wrote earlier, first, under pressure from the Central Bank of Russia, they simply notified us that they were closing the account we use to raise money for the campaign. Then they announced they were changing the rules and now banning fundraising for politics altogether.
So now you won’t be able to raise money there for political prisoners, for promoting legislation, or for any public initiative at all.
This is a perfect example proving that under this regime there will be no growth through innovation. For the sake of a bunch of crooks who tremble at the very thought of political competition, they are crushing an electronic payments system and forcing it to change its rules. And yet it had grown, developed, and competed perfectly well without the slightest state interference.
It provided services, created jobs, and paid taxes. Competition in this sector of the economy is already intense, and now just another individual customer who wants to raise money for, say, a cat shelter will go open an account somewhere else.
So in order to make things a little worse for us, they made things much worse for: - Yandex.Money itself; - Yandex, which owns a 25% stake in the system; - Sberbank, which owns a 75% stake in the system.
It’s outrageous enough that they run Gazprom, but when they start running—and damaging—IT companies that emerged not thanks to the state, but in spite of it, that is truly awful.
In the beautiful Russia of the future, this kind of crap won’t happen.
In the meantime, we’ve adjusted our donation system so we can manage without Yandex.Money. Here is the updated version: https://2018.navalny.com/donate/
You can now support the campaign in the following ways: — by transferring money to a card or account at Sberbank; — by transferring money to a card or account at Alfa-Bank; — by making a transfer from a bank card through the PayPal payment gateway or from a PayPal e-wallet. We also accept bitcoin.
I urge everyone, simply on principle, to send us any amount of money.
100 rubles (about $1 / €1). Or less. Or more.
Let the Kremlin see that with their pathetic, crooked, corrupt methods, they will not stop the campaign.