An episode from the film Srok. Alexei Navalny on Bastrykin, residency in the Czech Republic, and the fate of political prisoners
In this excerpt from the documentary project Srok, filmed in July 2012, Alexei talks about his high-profile investigation into Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, who was found to have a residence permit and business interests in the Czech Republic. Against the backdrop of the unfolding Bolotnaya case (the prosecution of protesters after the 2012 anti-government demonstrations in Moscow), Alexei explains why exposing the country’s top investigator is an important step toward weakening the entire Putin system, even though the fate of political prisoners is ultimately decided personally by Putin. Despite the threats and the obvious absurdity of a situation in which the country’s top security official turned out to be a secret European resident himself, Alexei remains optimistic and says he is not afraid of pressure from the authorities.
Text version
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For me, doing an investigation into
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Bastrykin is important, because no one but
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me is going to do it at all.
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Well, someone else will come in, replace
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Bastrykin. That complicates the system.
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Weakening the system is fighting it. I
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believe that in this area I am
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relatively more effective than in others.
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Everyone knew he was a crook. Everyone knew
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he made threats. But
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to be the head of the Investigative
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Committee, have access to state secrets, and at the same time
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hold a residence permit—even by their own
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gangster-style code of conduct—well,
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that is a) stupid and b) wrong. A residence
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permit, constant lying, setting up
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a company, one wife here, another wife there.
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Well, unlike Novaya Gazeta (an independent Russian newspaper), I’m not going to
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say that the incident is over,
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but in any case he violated his disclosure declaration.
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In the last month of his presidency, Medvedev
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dismissed some cops
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for filing inaccurate
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declarations. The situation is absolutely
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a mirror image with
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Bastrykin. Did you see that Khinshtein wrote
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that he’s supposedly going to look into
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the tax issue?
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Let him check. Let him check. If, on the tax issue,
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he makes a parliamentary inquiry, that will be
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better than if we make our own. We—I am
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absolutely sure it was 50,000 crowns. That is,
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of course, a small amount, about 2,000
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euros, but at the time Bastrykin should have
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paid income tax. If he did not
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pay it, he was evading taxes. If he
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did pay it, then he admits that all of
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this really happened. Bastrykin will be convicted for
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forging documents, for fraud,
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and they’ll appoint a good, normal
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head of the Investigative Committee,
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who will start fighting corruption and
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so on.
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I have a question. This scandal
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that is building, that could
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even specifically lead to Bastrykin’s
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resignation—can it affect the fate of
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these political prisoners, or not? Or
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is it just a matter of replacing one with another?
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I think that issues connected with
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the fate of political prisoners, I’m sure,
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are decided, of course, not by Bastrykin. Bastrykin
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handles lots of nasty, dirty things,
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procedural matters, like, well,
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the degree of brazenness during a
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search, but the fundamental questions—who
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gets how much time and who gets arrested—
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are decided, of course, directly by Putin.
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Aren’t you afraid they might take some
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kind of physical countermeasures?
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I understand that they may take
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countermeasures, but I’m not afraid. If I
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were afraid, I wouldn’t be writing this.
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As for Bastrykin.ru, where they sell toilets.
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Seriously, we didn’t make it. When we
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started looking into everything,
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Vadim Kobzev, our lawyer, found
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that site. There really were toilets there.
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The toilets really were Czech. I don’t know who
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made it.
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What nonsense. It’s practically a brand already.