Kirov Region Governor Nikita Belykh ordered the creation of a non-profit organization, the "Kirov Region Governor’s Initiatives Support Fund," headed by Alexei Navalny. Local businesspeople have already begun receiving letters inviting them to provide financial support for the governor’s initiatives. from here My response. This is, of course, my mistake. I should have explained it right away instead of waiting for people to start asking questions. So I understand those who are writing posts like this one. So here’s the situation. A fund has been created to support the governor’s initiatives in Kirov Region. The fund’s founders are advisers to belyh. Namely: Alexei Navalny, Grigory Guselnikov, Alexei Kozmin, and Alexei Sitnikov lesha_sitnikov. I am the head of the fund. Its purpose is exactly what the name says: to support the governor’s initiatives that are necessary, but cannot and should not be implemented through government mechanisms. For example, there is an official document: the region’s development strategy. To put it mildly, it is not a very high-quality document. But budget money has already been spent on it, and there is nowhere to get new money. The strategy needs to be redone, and Belykh said he was ready to finance that out of his own pocket. So he deposited 1 million rubles of his personal funds into the fund’s account, and the fund transferred that money to the development team. As for the idea that we are "shaking down businessmen": At the moment, funds are being raised for only one program: "Clean City." It is similar to a Moscow program under which city authorities award prizes and grants to the best street cleaner, the best housing and utilities management company, and so on. Moscow is a rich city and pays for these prizes from the budget. Kirov has no such money, so we are raising the prize fund ourselves. The goal is to raise 2 million rubles. That amount was set by an agreement between the regional government and the Kirov city administration. How are we raising the money? Through a straightforward mass mailing to organizations in the region, inviting them to take part in the program. **Do I think funds like this look suspicious? **Yes, I do. That is precisely why I am interested in creating this kind of structure on a fundamentally clear and understandable basis. You can create a crooked fund, or you can create an honest one. If no one has managed to create an honest one before, that does not mean Belykh’s advisers and Belykh himself cannot do it. If I were integrated into the global elite, I would say this is our challenge. Two people are paid to work for the fund: an accountant and a lawyer. Each earns 15,000 rubles. No one else receives a salary there, and no one will. All fund flows will be published on a dedicated website. And not just in the form of "We spent such-and-such amount here or there," but literally the bank entries themselves: how much was received from whom, and how much was sent to whom. All minutes, decisions, and so on will be published as well. I now realize that we will need to create something like a public audit group. Media representatives, local deputies, or simply citizens who believe the fund is involved in anything questionable will be able to join such a group and check everything themselves. So far, the fund’s only donor has been Belykh himself, who contributed 1 million rubles and then another 200,000 rubles. As I wrote above, the 1 million went toward developing the strategy, while the 200,000 was issued as a one-year interest-free loan to a mother of many children (seven children), Ms. Lebedeva from Kirov, who found herself in a difficult life situation. That 200,000 is an exception, and the fund does not plan to engage in direct charitable activity. There are people who know how to do that and do it well. What will happen to those businesspeople who refuse to transfer money to the fund? Well, at first we planned to torture them in the basement of the regional administration building, but then we abandoned that idea. Nothing at all will happen to those who do not contribute. Those who do contribute will receive a written thank-you from me and the satisfaction of knowing that they gave money to an important and worthwhile project, rather than to some kind of slush fund. An important point: we are not raising money in general. In other words, we are not creating a cash reserve for the governor or anything like that. We raise money only for a specific project. Once we collect 2 million for "Clean City," we will stop collecting. If there is a new project, we will notify everyone, coordinate it, and start raising money again. Right now, as I see it, the main task is not even fundraising but explaining how the system works. We need to show everyone that this is a normal, transparent arrangement, not a kickback scheme. That’s it. If you have questions, I’ll answer them. P.S. The gold Lamborghini parked in the Kirov Region administration lot does not belong to me. I was just allowed to take it for a spin.