My phone has been ringing off the hook all morning: what do you think about the FSB calling the National Guard’s food procurement “prone to corruption,” and the prices “unjustifiably inflated”?
Damn, what can I even say?
Wonderful. I’m glad the FSB has finally done something useful. But why do I need the FSB to understand that 29 is less than 37?
All right, here’s a practical exercise for anyone who wants to feel like the FSB:
We take a look at the National Guard contract. We see the purchase price for onions is 37.30 rubles, and for cabbage, 46.78 rubles.
And that’s all in large wholesale quantities.
We can’t be bothered to go to the store, so we check how much onions and cabbage cost IN MOSCOW WITH HOME DELIVERY. In other words, at the highest possible retail price.
Onions: 29.90 rubles
Cabbage: 25.90 rubles.
Congratulations: you’ve just become an FSB investigator for especially important cases and uncovered theft worth billions of rubles.
That is exactly what we did:
The thing is, Zolotov is stealing on such a scale in the National Guard that it simply can’t be denied anymore. Fine, let the FSB say the procurement was all above board. There are roughly 80 million people in Russia who bought those damn onions last week for half of what the National Guard paid six months ago.
Still, there are two things I want to comment on. An article in RBC suggests that the brisk and energetic FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service) has long been investigating this case on its own, without any reports from us.
But what we see is the exact opposite. The FAS is refusing to open a case because it says the matter is being reviewed somewhere-or-other in the law enforcement system.
For some reason, though, the FAS did not refuse to open a case when the FSB came to them. And there’s something odd about the timing too: they spent a full six months reviewing the FSB’s complaint, even though the maximum review period is three months. So why won’t the FAS consider the case based on our complaint? For a very simple reason: in that case, we would become a party to the proceedings and gain access to the documents, while the FAS’s real job is to save old hands like Zolotov and Medvedev, who made money off this contract.
Second. Notice that the violations are said to lie in the actions of the meat-processing plant “Druzhba Narodov” (“Friendship of Peoples”), not in the actions of National Guard officials. So here too we see Zolotov being shielded from the investigation. Supposedly, it’s the meat plant that’s to blame. And the fact that it belongs to Zolotov’s former subordinate—well, that just happened by accident.
But we’re starting to receive replies from the Military Prosecutor’s Office. The Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Nizhny Novgorod garrison says it has opened a case specifically against National Guard personnel, and specifically on the basis of our complaint. We should be getting similar replies from all the military districts.
Third, and funniest of all. Tomorrow we have a preliminary hearing in the commercial court, where that same “Druzhba Narodov” plant is suing me and the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) for allegedly damaging the honor and dignity of honest businessmen.
And the basis of their lawsuit is this: our prices are market prices, and Navalny is lying about everything.
But that’s actually great: the question of their guilt is central to resolving the case, so we will petition the court to obtain all the inspection materials, and the court should grant those motions.
Though I have no doubt they’ll still “win,” and the court will order the video taken down.
And we, armed with nothing but common sense and now even the FSB’s admission that the contract was corrupt, will once again be fighting Roskomnadzor (Russia’s media and internet censor), as it blocks yet another one of our videos and another post on this blog.