Must-read. Chichvarkin’s interview, as a celebration of the anniversary of his escape to England:
— I see. Let’s talk about the accusations being made against you. Please give us your version of events. *— I basically laid it out at the press conference last September, and it really hasn’t changed at all since then. The same people who robbed the entire market in 2005 under the guise of fighting smuggling — that is, they seized $50 million worth of goods from seven companies on behalf of the state, then used forged documents to steal those phones from the state, sold them on the market for cash, and pocketed $25 million or $30 million — tried, once we were operating in the legal, above-board sphere, to shove the whole market back under the baseboard again, so that everyone would be back in the black market and they could go on robbing everyone. *— ***Can you name any names? ***— *It’s no secret — these are senior officials. It was Directorate K, Unit 38 — the Bureau of Special Technical Measures. For some reason they believed the entire market belonged to them, and basically they were skimming off the whole market, and probably still are, for all I know. ... *— **So basically, you have no plans at all to return to Russia? **— No. When it becomes a free country where people can build and create — gladly. But right now I can’t imagine when that might happen. I don’t especially want to gloat. Who knows who may have to flee, and under what circumstances, but not so long ago: In search of the best Participants in the “Strategy 2020” forum are trying to determine who belongs to today’s Russian elite
*The main guest is Vladislav Surkov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration; the host is Yevgeny Chichvarkin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Euroset. * Moral: there’s no need to hold any forums to figure out that the “modern Russian elite” consists of greedy, utterly lawless cocksuckers (and I mean that in the bad sense of the word).