That’s how we live. We report a scam worth billions. The detective sits on the case for three months and issues a refusal to open a criminal case. We smack the detective down through the prosecutor’s office or the courts. The case goes back to the detective, he sits on it for another three months and again issues a refusal to open a case. We smack the detective down again.... And so it goes on forever. Half the cases get bounced around like this, accomplishing absolutely nothing. This one, for example, has been hanging around since October 2008. *(Shameless self-promotion: the detective was smacked down by fil_defense. Good job, Dimasik! Have a cookie.) * I should note that the last time I was giving a statement at the Moscow Central Administrative District police department about my fraud complaint involving 5 billion rubles, at the next desk they were questioning a guy who’d been caught illegally renting out an apartment. Which means he wasn’t paying income tax. Probably about 5,000 rubles a month. The cops were thrilled that they’d caught the guy, the evidence was there, and the case would definitely be opened. When I quite reasonably pointed out that my case was a lot more interesting, and that the damage done and the public danger were simply incomparable, I was told: *This is two years of work! And the boss won’t authorize it anyway. *So here’s what I’ll say. You can accuse me of radicalism. The Ministry of Internal Affairs can be disbanded altogether. Completely. Without regret. We won’t lose any of those supposedly great professionals. There won’t be any significant damage to the country or society. No crime wave either. Let them all go into business; that’s what their brains are actually well suited for. Pay everyone a year’s salary in advance as compensation. Even if you fired them all and replaced them with recent law school graduates with no work experience (the only hiring requirement being that they pass a polygraph test for corruption risk), we’d end up with a much better police force. An order of magnitude better. Two months of confusion would be worth it.
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