Alexei Navalny’s arrest over the September 9 protest gave the crooks some unprecedented boldness. First, Volodin came out and offered a ridiculous explanation: that his retired mother had always been a dollar millionaire and bought a 400-square-meter apartment with her own money.
Now Putin’s former bodyguard, Zolotov, is practically shouting at his subordinates through the official website of the National Guard of Russia (Rosgvardiya): “Navalny is lying about everything, Medvedev and I are not robbing you blind!” He is afraid to write Navalny’s surname outright, just like his boss—the man whose bodyguard he was for his entire career. So instead he writes “pseudo anti-corruption fighter” and “so-called specialist-corruptor.” Thanks, we’ll add that to the collection.
We are actually quite surprised that any response came at all. We have written many times about Zolotov and his wealth, and there was never any reply.
And now, out of nowhere, there is a whole opus. And there is a reason for that.
Our video about Rosgvardiya’s potatoes has been watched by 2 million people on YouTube. Of those 2 million, obviously at least 100,000 were from Rosgvardiya itself. After all, the video is for them, about them, and about their bosses. Soldiers watched it, police officers watched it, and in the end even the cooks who prepare Rosgvardiya lunches from these products watched it. And now every day, every time, in every region, these people look at their plates and remember: we were brazenly robbed and deceived. And it was Zolotov and Medvedev who did it.
Well then, we have more bad news for you. In the so-called “Rosgvardiya rebuttal,” you were also deceived, and they also lied from beginning to end.
Let’s go through the Rosgvardiya press service’s counterarguments one by one—perhaps we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation really did unfairly smear Zolotov and Medvedev, and food for Rosgvardiya is not being purchased at inflated prices or at lower quality? (Spoiler: no.)
Everything is jumbled together to make the text hard to understand. But we sorted it out:
Accusation 1. Rosgvardiya claims that we supposedly failed to take many details into account: the packaging volumes of certain goods (juice, oil), expenses related to treasury oversight of the contract, food quality inspections, the cost of containers, packaging, labeling, loading and unloading work, and so on.
Our response: Watch our video again. We are comparing prices from your own comparable contracts for two different years. In both cases, all of that was already taken into account; the packaging volumes and all GOST standards are identical.
Accusation 2. Rosgvardiya claims that we ignore seasonal price fluctuations in procurement. Supposedly, vegetables are expensive at the beginning of summer and cheap later on.
Our response: We are not ignoring it at all. We use Rosstat (Russia’s federal statistics agency), which lets us see the average consumer price of a product for each month and in each region.
In June 2018 in Stavropol Krai (the previous contract’s supply came from there), the average consumer price for 1 kilogram of white cabbage was 27 rubles 22 kopecks. Let us remind you that it was bought wholesale for almost 47 rubles. The gap between the consumer price and the wholesale price is nearly 20 rubles—and not in favor of the latter. That is not how this works. If you look at the previous contract, the difference is only about 1.5 rubles and, naturally, in favor of the wholesale price.
Even the average consumer price—not to mention the wholesale price—rose by only 11 rubles, not 30. Do you see the difference?
Please explain why seasonality affects Rosgvardiya’s purchases but not the purchases of ordinary stores. Or is Rosstat misleading us?
Onions. The December wholesale supply price was 16 rubles 47 kopecks per kilogram. Compare that with Rosstat’s data: according to them, the average consumer price in December was 20 rubles 13 kopecks. The June wholesale supply price was 37 rubles 30 kopecks. And once again, miracles! According to Rosstat, the average consumer price in June was 8 rubles cheaper—29 rubles 33 kopecks.
Vegetable prices do change with the seasons, but nowhere near as dramatically as Rosgvardiya’s press service wants to make it seem. Mediazona clearly showed the maximum seasonal variation in vegetable prices and disproved the claim that vegetable prices in June are the highest of the year.
In the past, wholesale procurement prices were lower than average consumer prices, and now they are significantly higher. How is that possible?
And what about the price difference for non-vegetable products? Do those have seasonality too?
Accusation 3. Rosgvardiya claims that the juice package from our experiment at Pyaterochka (a Russian supermarket chain) did not match the required GOST standard or volume, and that this somehow destroys our entire investigation.
Our response: Once again, first and foremost we were comparing contracts. The packaging volume and GOST standard in the contracts being compared are exactly the same, the delivery locations are the same, yet the price for juice alone differs by a factor of two.
Does Rosgvardiya seriously want to cover this up by saying that during our experiment, Pyaterochka did not have juice of the exact same GOST standard and volume? Do you take all of us—and your own servicemen in particular—for complete idiots?
For the third time, we repeat the point. What matters is the difference between comparable procurements. Our trip to Pyaterochka had only one purpose: to show how shamelessly Zolotov, Medvedev, and company are stealing from the pockets of their own forces. In reality, it would be cheaper to buy these goods retail in a supermarket.
And a couple more words.
First, note how carefully Rosgvardiya sidestepped the issue of the deteriorating quality of the oil and meat.
Second, the more we study this issue, the more convinced we become that we have stumbled onto some gigantic and very well-planned kickback scheme. And this “Rosgvardiya rebuttal” is further evidence of that.
There is not a single constructive answer to the questions. Nothing has been disproved. Why did they say nothing about the plant’s owner, Kantemirov? Why did they not deny that he is Zolotov’s former subordinate? And why—this really is the million-dollar question—does Rosgvardiya not follow the Federal Law on the Contract System? It clearly states that a government order does not require purchases from a sole supplier. It merely allows for that possibility.
If you are against robbery in any form, join the September 9 protest.
Moscow — Pushkinskaya Square, 2:00 p.m.
St. Petersburg — Lenin Square, 2:00 p.m.
Other cities:
Group for protest events on Facebook Group for protest events on VK
You can do your part. Here are invitation images for the protest in different cities. Download an image, send it to all your contacts on WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram, and to every group you belong to. And ask them to forward it on.