Congratulations to everyone. After our investigation, the March 26 protests, and all the public attention, Dmitry Medvedev’s “charitable” foundations did something they had never done before.
They published their financial statements. Everything is now publicly available on the Justice Ministry’s website.
But you can’t look at this without tears. It genuinely makes you want to smash or break something when you realize the colossal disparity between real charity—funded by tens and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people chipping in—and Medvedev’s fake version.
Medvedev’s money man, Yeliseev, admitted in his interview that all four of their foundations are essentially one foundation.
And now it can be stated completely officially that this Medvedev “charitable super-foundation,” whose entire charity consists of maintaining palaces and vineyards, takes in an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE more money than real charities, even the biggest ones.
Medvedev’s palace-and-vineyard foundation is the country’s biggest “charity.” Judging by the amount of money involved, it ought to be helping three times as many people as, for example, Podari Zhizn (Gift of Life).
I talk about this in my new video.
And here’s the background material to go with the video.
A reminder: Medvedev’s empire consists of:
Let’s look at the reports.
Add it all up, and the annual budget of Medvedev’s super-foundation comes to 3,681,545,000 rubles.
Now, practically sobbing, let’s compare that with the budgets of the biggest real charitable foundations.
The Podari Zhizn (Gift of Life) foundation—I'm sure everyone knows it. It is Russia’s largest and best-known charitable foundation. Its annual spending is 2.3 billion rubles. That is almost 1.5 BILLION less than Medvedev’s foundations. They spend one and a half times less on saving children’s lives, treatment, and rehabilitation than is spent on preserving the splendor of Medvedev’s palaces.
Another example: Rusfond also needs no introduction. They’re the ones who raise money for medical treatment through text-message donations on Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel). Their annual spending is 920 million rubles—4 (!!) times less than what Medvedev’s foundations spent.
It’s no accident that Medvedev’s foundations hid their financial reporting for so many years. Because this is what the list of Russia’s richest nonprofit foundations really looks like.
If you combine Medvedev’s foundations, this is what you get:
Mitya Aleshkovsky, who knows this sector well, told me that there are only 38 fundraising foundations in Russia that collect more than 50 million rubles a year.
And that means hundreds of wonderful people working selflessly to help thousands—paying for treatment, medicines, and so on. The results of that charity are clearly visible.
And meanwhile, it turns out there’s an iceberg like this right next to them. I would guess that the combined annual budget of those 38 foundations is smaller than that of Medvedev’s four, where the money goes to decanters and maids.
So there’s another answer to the question: what could be done if corruption were defeated?
- Specifically, by taking away Medvedev’s corrupt money, it would be possible to pay for operations for every child who needs them.
Is that worth fighting for? I think so.
Is it worth taking part in the nationwide anti-corruption protest on June 12, Russia Day (a national holiday)? I’m sure it is. 83 cities are already participating. Sign up, or organize an event in your city if it’s not on the list.
Help me spread this video. People often ask: how do you persuade brainwashed Putin supporters? Well, try sending this to them. Especially if they support charitable causes.
Don’t forget to sign in support of my candidacy.
And of course, we need money to run the campaign. We’d be glad for your donation—we won’t be buying any decanters.