The Vykhino Newspaper

NAVALNY

IN VYKHINO

CANDIDATE PROFILE “We will fight and keep fighting. Relying on your support, we will definitely win sooner or later!” PAGE 4

RESIDENTS’ OPINIONS “I sincerely hope that if Alexei comes to power, the situation in the city will change for the better” PAGE 2

DADDY’S DAUGHTERS, OR CROOKS' PROPERTY PAGE 3

ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, AT 4:00 PM, NOT FAR FROM VYKHINO METRO STATION, A MEETING TOOK PLACE BETWEEN MOSCOW MAYORAL CANDIDATE ALEXEI NAVALNY AND LOCAL RESIDENTS.

Volunteers set up a stage and chairs on the lawn near the movie theater, music is playing, and the weather is favorable. A young woman, apparently seeing Alexei for the first time in person, is surprised by how young he looks. An elderly woman tries to reach her acquaintances by phone to tell them where the meeting is taking place.

Alexei aims to be the most open and understandable candidate, so that voters can see him and take action. As part of his election campaign, Navalny meets every day with residents of different Moscow districts. “If you want power, go out and meet people—let them ask you uncomfortable questions,” the candidate explains.

PROBLEMS THAT CAN BE SOLVED

And Muscovites have plenty of uncomfortable questions. For example, an elderly lady in the front row asks why Alexei decided to run for mayor at all. Alexei replies that he stepped forward because he knows how to solve people’s specific problems: streamline public utilities, restore oversight of healthcare spending, help ordinary people get access to clinics, and bring back some fairness.

Healthcare takes up a large part of the discussion. Residents ask why 100 billion rubles (about US$3 billion at the time) were spent on modernizing “free” healthcare. That sum includes ultrasound machines that cost twice the world market price. “I’m running for mayor so that we can finally stop stealing,” says Alexei.

We Don’t Need Migrants

Alexei addresses the problem of the constantly growing number of migrants, whose presence he does not see as an urgent necessity for Moscow. The number of crimes committed, at least in part, by these same migrants is also rising proportionally. “Do you know how much your street cleaner earns?” Alexei asks. The official salary of a street cleaner is pitifully low; in hand, he receives 10,000–15,000 rubles a month (roughly US$300–450 at the time).

As the Mayor, So the City

A young man in a T-shirt asks Alexei for the microphone to share an observation: “Yesterday I was coming back from Crimea, driving through Belgorod Region, and the roads there were in terrible condition.” Alexei talks about the urgent need for road repairs, about cost overruns, and about the steps a mayor must take to make the city more comfortable to live in.

Honest elections must be ensured. A man with a backpack asks what Alexei will do if he gets 49 percent in the first round. According to Alexei, citing independent sociological polls is pointless because the authorities block information and participation. For the authorities, this is a real catastrophe: some Navalny, whom television only talks about as if he were a thief, is posing real competition in the election to the establishment candidate. That is why they will use every lever of pressure they have.

— Alexei ends yet another meeting and heads off to another district.

(Page 2)

Navalny

What Residents Say About the Meeting

ALEXANDER, 32, WORKS IN PUBLISHING: “A great deal depends on what kind of mayor we choose, because this is an urgent issue that deserves attention. Of the candidates on offer, Navalny is the one I find most appealing. I sincerely hope that if Alexei comes to power, the situation in the city will change for the better. One argument in his favor is meetings like this: a person would not take on such difficult work and publicly declare it just for appearances or for electoral decoration—there has to be a real explanation. What worries me most is the overall economic situation in the country: the development of small business, rent, licensing, bribery, and so on. Until it becomes possible to run a business normally and start your own enterprise, we should not expect economic success. ”

TATYANA EFIMOVNA, 63: “I came to this meeting because I am very deeply concerned about the problem of migrants. Sobyanin has been in power for quite a while already, yet even he is trying to change something. Alexei speaks with us, and it seems to me that he will be able to solve this problem, and I believe in him! I understand this personally: I have five children, and my son, who is the same age as Alexander, is living off me—he cannot find work. Everywhere I go, there are no openings, because they hire migrants. ”

ELENA: “I put ‘For Navalny’ stickers on my car, and now one of the windows is gone. It happened on Friday. When I got back from the store, I put the shopping bags on the back seat and started the engine. In the rear-view mirror I saw another car cut me off. Then, at one moment, a shadow flashed by, the window was smashed, they grabbed my bag with all my documents, and drove away. There was a witness who tried to catch up with the fleeing car; he wrote down the license plate number, the make, the color, and fully described the people — it was a janitor. About 150 meters from the scene of the crime there was a police unit from the Tekstilshchiki district police department. In short: I found this out later, but I suspect it was all connected to my activity in support of Navalny. In any case, I don’t think it was random. It’s frightening, of course... ”

POLICING AT THE REGIONAL LEVEL A young man in glasses asks Navalny what can be done about a police force controlled by the federal authorities. A mayor really does not have the power to reform the police, but he does have the ability to influence the organization of video surveillance, urban order, and other measures that could provide real protection for citizens. Alexei proposes tighter oversight and tougher punishment for corruption among officers, as well as a proper CCTV system in crowded public places and on city streets.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN The general point of the question is why Sobyanin does not want to take part in debates. Alexei believes this is due to the authorities’ unwillingness to work with voters in an open format. Navalny proposes public meetings and dialogue with people in the streets and squares in order to discuss real problems and ways to solve them.

HONEST ELECTIONS MUST BE ENSURED A man with a backpack asks what Sobyanin will do if he gets 49 percent in the first round. As Alexei says, citing independent sociological polls, this would be a real disaster for the authorities: some Navalny, whom television portrays only as an enemy, would be posing genuine competition to the establishment candidate in the election. That is why they will use every lever of pressure available to them.

(Page 3)

DADDY’S DAUGHTERS, OR CROOKS’ PROPERTY

Sergei Sobyanin has been at the head of Moscow for nearly three years. During that time, many questions have accumulated for him, but he does not like answering them. He remains silent about the sidewalk paving policy, which in many places fell apart soon after being laid. Yet this involved hundreds of millions of rubles — either squandered incompetently or simply stolen by dishonest officials from the Moscow city budget. He is also silent about Tverskaya Street, which brings in millions of rubles a day.

MOSCOW

Ahead of the election, the electoral commission published information on the 2012 income and property of Sergei Sobyanin, his wife, and his underage daughter. One detail immediately stands out: a 308-square-meter apartment in Moscow owned by schoolgirl Olga Sergeyevna Sobyanina.

How much is it worth?

Open databases make it easy to find the address of Olga Sobyanina’s apartment: Moscow, 12 Rochdelskaya Street, Building 1. It is an ultra-fashionable building in central Moscow near the White House (the Russian government building). An apartment in the same building with an area of 200.2 square meters is listed for sale. Its price is 103.8 million rubles, or about 518,000 rubles per square meter. It is not hard to estimate that the 308-square-meter apartment belonging to the underage daughter of the city’s leader is worth roughly 173 million rubles.

Where did the income come from?

Sergei Sobyanin first declared his income in 2000, when he was a candidate for governor of Tyumen Region. His annual income for 1999 was 229,000 rubles. In 2003, together with his colleagues from United Russia, he published a declaration according to which he had earned 1.6 million rubles in 2002. For 2008, his income was 3,472,200 rubles, and his wife’s income was 21,800. For 2009, they were 2,319,776 and 18,586 rubles respectively. For 2010, 4,760,000 and 19,300 rubles.

Sergei Semyonovich’s income and that of his wife for 2003–2007 remained unchanged. But even if we assume that he earned no less in those years than in 2008–2009, that still does not explain the existence of a 308-square-meter apartment owned by his underage daughter. Officials receive salaries, but in any case, without outside sources of income, he did not have the means to buy an apartment on Rochdelskaya Street.

Privatized?

Sobyanin said that the apartment in central Moscow had long been declared by him. “This is standard practice,” he said. But a number of journalistic investigations indicate that obtaining such an apartment under the existing system is impossible without patronage. Building 12 on Rochdelskaya Street has appeared in a number of publications as an example of how elite housing ends up in the hands of people close to those in power.

A POOR ORPHAN? It remains to be выяснить how Sobyanin could have legally obtained housing: under a social tenancy agreement. The law provides for such a possibility if a family’s income is below the subsistence minimum. However, that is highly unlikely for the family of a person holding high office.

ST. PETERSBURG Government official Sobyanin has a second daughter, it turns out: Anna. In 2011, two weeks after her 25th birthday, Anna bought an apartment in St. Petersburg on Malaya Konyushennaya Street. This is the very center of the city, a prestigious and extremely expensive area. The apartment owned by Anna Sergeyevna is just under 205 square meters, worth about 116.6 million rubles. How did the daughter of an official whose average annual income over the past ten years did not exceed 2.7 million rubles come to own an apartment worth 116 million? “We are not obliged to answer such questions,” officials replied. Alexei Navalny writes that this looks like a scheme for enriching people close to those in power.

HER BUSINESS

A year before buying the apartment, Anna became one of the founders of Fors-Group LLC. The company supplies luxury furniture to facilities listed on its website. Its clients include: an administration building; government bodies; enterprises; government international relations offices; engineering and utilities complexes; and others. The talented daughters of the ruling elite receive lucrative contracts, which raises questions about conflicts of interest and transparency.

CHILDREN OF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ARE EASY TO SPOT BY THEIR LUXURY HOUSING AND THEIR SUPPOSEDLY EXCEPTIONAL BUSINESS TALENT (The article goes on to analyze income and property, giving examples of apartments, companies, and schemes linked to people close to those in power.)

ON SEPTEMBER 8, VOTE FOR ALEXEI NAVALNY!

(Page 4)

WHO IS NAVALNY?

ONE OF US

Alexei Navalny spent many years investigating corruption in Moscow and across the country. For those who read the news online, his name is synonymous with an honest fight against high-ranking crooks and thieves. Together with his team, Alexei came up with and carried out public projects that improved ordinary people’s lives. City Hall officials fed us promises, while Navalny’s projects actually worked. Alexei became a candidate for mayor of Moscow in order to fight arbitrariness and the looting of everyone’s money on a new level. For Navalny, every positive change in Moscow means positive change in the country. He is convinced that if corruption and impunity are stopped in the capital, positive change in Russia will become inevitable.

“Real politics means saying what you truly think and engaging in public and political activity without asking anyone’s permission.”

Alexei has documented the theft of trillions of rubles across Russia. He repeatedly filed complaints with the Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee, demanding criminal cases against corrupt officials. But law enforcement agencies have not been willing to pursue this seriously. No matter what large-scale scam or monopoly he exposed, it always touched the interests of people close to the authorities. By speaking publicly about this, Navalny has made many enemies among senior officials. That is why he is kept off the main television channels and subjected to smear campaigns. Nevertheless, he continues his work and his large-scale public projects.

Alexei Navalny was born on June 4, 1976. He served a prison sentence and received an economics education. He lives and works in Moscow. He is married and has children: 12-year-old daughter Dasha and 5-year-old son Zakhar.

Navalny has already done a lot

Navalny runs successful projects that help people. He brings together thousands of people to fight corruption and inefficiency.

People trust Navalny

People trust Navalny and willingly fund his projects. About 30,000 people donate each year to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, as well as to fight the corruption that exists in the fund.

WE KNOW HOW TO MAKE THOSE WHO TAKE OUR MONEY FOR HOUSING AND COMMUNAL SERVICES WORK (Russia)

More than 90,000 complaints about violations; more than 25,000 violations corrected.

WE KNOW HOW TO MAKE BAD ROADS BETTER (Russia)

More than 45,000 complaints about roads; more than 12,000 of them resolved.

WE KNOW HOW TO DEFEAT THEFT IN PUBLIC PROCUREMENT (Corruption)

The embezzlement of 59 billion rubles in taxpayer funds has been exposed.

Alexei Navalny’s full platform is available at navalny.ru

Contacts and links: vk.com/teamnavalny facebook.com/teamnavalny instagram.com/teamnavalny odnoklassniki.ru/group/teamnavalny twitter.com/teamnavalny Campaign headquarters: 22 Lyalin Lane. Phone: +7 (495) 215-54-31. team@navalny.ru