The zeal of the bailiff service knows no bounds. Now they’re going to cut off mobile service for debtors. And since the beginning of this year, they have restricted 8,000 people from traveling abroad. They’re also looking for debtors through Odnoklassniki.ru (a Russian social network). When we read reports like this, we think it has nothing to do with us. That it’s for drug addicts, drunks, and people who bought a microwave and don’t want to pay for it, and so on. Maybe deadbeat dads, too. I can share an unforgettable experience of dealing with the bailiff service, which lasted several months and ended last Thursday. It’s an instructive story. I had this situation: I didn’t pay my electricity bill for three months. Not out of any malicious intent. I didn’t pay for the same reasons everyone doesn’t pay: no time, or there’s a line at Sberbank (Russia’s largest state bank). But after a letter came from MOEK (a Moscow utilities company): you bastards, we’re going to sue, I went and paid the debt. Three months passed. Then suddenly a letter arrives from the court: you, Navalny, are a scoundrel, you don’t pay your debts, so we are collecting the money from you through the courts. The ruling separately stated that I had failed to appear in court and had not responded in any way to explanatory conversations and phone calls. That they had contacted me repeatedly, and so on. Naturally, I had received no summonses and nobody had called. Most likely, the magistrate handles these cases in bulk, by the stack. What to do was unclear—I wasn’t about to run off and appeal it; I had no time. So I thought, they’ll sort it out—the debt had been paid off before the court hearing anyway. A couple more months later, a letter arrives from the bailiffs: enforcement proceedings have been opened against you, pay immediately or we’ll seize everything. What idiots, I thought. But there was nothing to be done. In a way it was our own fault—we had failed to pay for a while. My wife went to MOEK, got a certificate stating that there had been no debt for many months, and I sent that certificate to the bailiff service. Two months later, another letter arrived saying everything was fine—the enforcement proceedings had been terminated. And this is where it gets interesting. Three months later, a new letter arrives from the bailiffs: notice of enforcement proceedings and SEIZURE OF MOTOR VEHICLE. Instructions are sent to all MOTOTRER offices (what a name) prohibiting any registration actions involving the car. And the case number listed was the very same one as the case that had been closed several months earlier. I was stunned. This was no longer something you could just ignore and let them sort out themselves—the car was under seizure. And it should be said that the bailiffs’ office hours are in the finest traditions of the state: walk-in hours twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) until noon. On non-reception days, they won’t even let you onto their floor. They sit in some dump in Kuzminki, with insane lines, and so on. You can’t just call them and explain the situation: not allowed, come during office hours, young man_I’ve_already_explained_everything_to_you. It took me a month to find time to get there, and I finally did. Last Thursday. A blonde girl of about 22 (and it turned out she had signed all these letters) says wearily: that can’t be. I lay out: - the certificate saying I owe nothing, - her order terminating the proceedings, - and her own order opening proceedings and seizing the car. She checks the database and a minute later announces: YOU AREN’T IN THE DATABASE AT ALL. - ???!!! WTF??!! - “I haven’t the slightest idea,” the bailiff girl replies. - But these are your signatures here, right? You signed these orders? - Yes, they’re mine. But you have no idea what goes on here. Ten minutes later, they finally found me in the database. They marked the case as closed. But what about the car? - Will it be seized? - Yep, it will be seized, the girl replies. She writes me a paper saying the seizure has been lifted and hands it to me: -carry it with you just in case. And tomorrow we’ll send the same thing to MOTOTRER, and they’ll remove your car from the seizure database IN 37 DAYS. The point of all this is the following. All these agencies operate according to their favorite rule—the presumption that the citizen is guilty. But that’s only half the problem. The real trap is that this presumption of guilt for us is multiplied by their wild chaos. That young bailiff told me she handles six thousand (!) cases. The office is literally piled high with mountains of paperwork. Among those mountains sit the bailiffs themselves, listening to crying old ladies: sonny, they sent me a bill to pay, I paid this much because they recalculated it for me, and now you’re demanding this much from me. The bailiffs can’t keep up with all these utility-account changes and make terrible mistakes. They know they’re making mistakes and keep making them anyway. For many years now they have been unable to establish normal paperwork procedures, they’re drowning in cases, but damn it, they still swagger around and shout that they’ll close the borders, block the roads, shut down websites, seize cat food, and take away three of your six McNuggets. In conclusion, just a piece of advice. Don’t be surprised, people, if your expensive vacation goes up in smoke because they won’t let you board a plane. Or if you try to sell your car and it gets hauled off to an impound lot. It may all be because the year before last there was a delay in paying the radio point fee (a legacy wired-radio utility charge) for the apartment where you’re registered, even though you haven’t lived there in years. Or because some database shows a fine in your name for crossing the street improperly. Check.