In the spring, we were just about to publish ACF’s traditional report for 2020, but then Putin decided to outlaw us. The Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) was designated an extremist organization, and our main formal legal entity was simply struck from the register of legal entities.
You might think that called for a party: no more reports to the prosecutor’s office, no more boxes of paperwork for the Justice Ministry, no more audits several times a year... No need to report to anyone anymore, since we no longer have a legal entity.
But that’s not the case. We still have you — our supporters, the people for whom we prepared this report every year. So we are reporting both on last year and on this year up to the moment of our formal liquidation: https://report2021.fbk.info/.
Over these eighteen months, there have been many, let’s say, difficulties, but we are proud that none of them managed to seriously damage our work.
Like everyone else, we had to work remotely for most of the time because of the pandemic. At the hardest moment, our team put forward a proposal for five steps to overcome the consequences of coronavirus — a program that remains relevant even now.
A tougher test than remote work was the attempt to destroy our legal entity back in 2020. ACF was hit with lawsuits totaling tens of millions of rubles. Under the Kremlin’s plan, we were supposed to hand over all of the foundation’s funds to Putin’s chef — Yevgeny Prigozhin (also an international criminal and a poisoner of schoolchildren).
But it didn’t work. The foundation continued to exist, Putin’s chef got nothing, and support for the foundation from you, our supporters, doubled. We were all deeply moved.
Then came August 2020. We all remember what happened then. Putin tried to kill Alexei Navalny. It seemed like that would be the end of our work. But it didn’t work. Navalny survived and immediately struck back by releasing an investigation into the people who tried to kill him.
2021 was the hardest year for ACF: Alexei’s arrest, a wave of protests, the “Free Navalny!” campaign, and, in the end, the extremism case. But despite all the attacks, ACF did not just survive or fade away. Throughout this entire period, we worked with incredible effectiveness — more effectively than ever before.
Of course, our main achievement this year — and perhaps in all of ACF’s existence — was the film about Putin’s palace. 120 million views, one YouTube record broken after another... We did not just tell the story of the biggest bribe in the world being handed over before our eyes — we showed in detail the full squalor of our ruling elite, with its golden toilet brushes and mud rooms.
Another hugely important video — or rather, a whole series — was the investigation into Navalny’s poisoning, which we produced together with Bellingcat and The Insider. We exposed a squad of state-employed poisoners, showed how Putin deals with his opponents using the FSB and Novichok, and recorded the call of the century — Navalny’s conversation with the man who tried to kill him.
It is hard to list all our investigations, videos, and projects from these eighteen months. It’s better to follow the link and read the full report.
It is a little sad to say that this is ACF’s last report in its usual form. But you know as well as we do that what matters most in the foundation is not legal entities or an office, but people. Some staff members stopped working at ACF, and it was very hard for us to part ways, but ACF kept most of its employees — our comrades — and now, in a new capacity, they continue the struggle as part of Navalny’s team.
We will keep working for your support and for the Beautiful Russia of the Future. You can support Navalny’s team here: https://world.fbk.info/. And if that support exists, then the team will keep reporting back to you.