“Corruption thrives where there is secrecy”

Alex Grigoryev: In many ways, your blog resembles WikiLeaks: you publish documents that, for various reasons, are not publicly accessible. Unlike WikiLeaks, however, you make specific demands of the Russian authorities and business structures. How often are those demands actually met? Alexei Navalny: You have identified my main difference from WikiLeaks exactly right: I do not just publish documents, I also point out that there are grounds to suspect a crime has been committed by specific individuals, and I offer a concrete mechanism for pursuing those people through both criminal and civil proceedings. Naturally, the Russian authorities are now trying to ignore all of this. Most often, they believe the best defense is offense. But in this case, they are trying to pretend that nothing at all is happening. Transneft and the Accounts Chamber do not confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. They do not deny it because the documents are genuine, but they cannot confirm it either, because that would automatically amount to admitting that they committed a serious crime. A.G.: Russia has repeatedly declared war on corruption, most recently by President Dmitry Medvedev. In your view, have these campaigns produced any positive results? A.N.: Anti-corruption campaigns are announced, on average, once a year. Putin created a special anti-corruption commission in the first year of his presidency. Yet we can see that nothing happens. The situation surrounding the documents I published shows the opposite: the level of corruption in the government is rising. The Transneft case shows that people stole billions, and the country’s top political leadership knew about it. And what does Prime Minister Vladimir Putin do? He appoints the chief suspect to head Olympic construction. A.G.: A number of international organizations—probably the best known being Transparency International—periodically publish rankings of corruption levels in different countries, including Russia. In your view, how objective are these rankings? A.N.: There are methodological questions about some of these rankings, but overall they reflect the trend in Russia quite accurately: the country is becoming more and more corrupt. The level of corruption, its impunity, and the brazenness of corrupt officials are all increasing. If the Russian government can dismiss Transparency International’s rankings, then just recently GRECO (the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption — A.G.), of which Russia is a member, also assessed the situation in our country. GRECO gave Russia an “unsatisfactory” mark for its anti-corruption efforts, because no concrete steps had been taken to combat this evil—apart from purely cosmetic measures. A.G.: What needs to be done to improve the situation? A.N.: There are a number of very simple and obvious steps that could improve the situation literally tomorrow. First and foremost, this concerns state-owned companies or companies operating under state control, which are the main source of corrupt practices. First, steps must be taken to increase the transparency of such companies: all officials sitting on boards of directors should be removed and replaced with independent directors. Companies must be required to publish documents such as board meeting minutes—there is no problem at all with putting them online. For major state projects—such as the Olympics, Skolkovo (a Russian state-backed innovation hub), and the APEC summit—fairly simple procedures should be introduced for organizing tenders, competitions, and publishing all relevant information. Look at how Transneft operated—it was like a top-secret construction project. It felt as though they were not laying a pipeline, but building a missile cruiser. Wherever there is secrecy, corruption flourishes. All documents should be open wherever state or commercial secrets are not involved. Of course, corruption will not disappear because of this, but stealing will become much more difficult. And if, as a result of these measures, they steal not 30 percent but 5 percent, that would already be a tremendous success. A.G.: In Russia, bloggers have recently become increasingly influential, and the authorities are responding to their publications more and more often. In your view, what explains this? A.N.: In the case of Transneft, public attention was drawn by the colossal scale of the theft. The $4 billion that I believe was stolen equals four annual budgets of Kirov Region. That is an enormous amount of money. As for the phenomenon of blogs in general, online journals have become the only real mass media and the only place where truthful information is circulated. To find out what is happening in the country, those in power do not watch Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel)—after all, they are the ones telling Channel One what news it should broadcast. What is really happening is written about by bloggers and a small number of free media outlets. The Russian authorities ignore a significant share of the actions that take place on the internet. But if tens of thousands of people react to a particular problem, the question arises: how many Russians would react if it were shown on TV? Unfortunately, the authorities often try to suppress this information and discredit the people who spread facts that are inconvenient for them. In other words, they use a strategy of resistance rather than a strategy of solving problems. A.G.: After your name became widely known and your blog entered the ranks of the most popular blogs on the Russian internet, did you start receiving new documents? A.N.: Every successful or partially successful campaign of mine leads to a flood of kompromat (damaging material) being dumped on me—some real, some fabricated. After we successfully got several fake auctions for information services procurement canceled, I began receiving dozens of letters every day describing tenders that, in the authors’ view, were fraudulent. Of course, I can file complaints on each of these cases, but I cannot replace the prosecutor’s office and the police. A.G.: You are studying at Yale University. Have you gained any knowledge there that is useful for your campaigns? A.N.: My studies are coming to an end. I have focused on how American and European legal systems can be used to pursue our crooks. One must remember that these crooks steal money in Russia, but invest it in the United States, Europe, and so on. Formally speaking, that is money laundering, which is a criminal offense. I have gained some understanding of how Western systems can be used to pursue people who commit crimes on Russian territory.