I apologize for taking so long to issue an official comment—I was in that part of Ukraine where instead of the internet, there are varenyky (dumplings), and instead of LiveJournal, nalistniki (thin stuffed pancakes). So: About four weeks ago, I got the first email in the series of “You idiots, who did you give my number to!!?” The person complained that some strange journalists were calling and asking strange questions, and, most importantly, seemed to have a suspicious amount of information about the user. So I replied with something along the lines of, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not watching you.” Then a couple more such emails came in. They described roughly the same thing. A woman would call, introduce herself as a reporter from a nonexistent media outlet, and ask why they had transferred money to RosPil. In some cases, it was clear that the mysterious woman knew about other transactions as well. Here’s a typical conversation.d**olboeb ** Almost everyone who wrote blamed either me or the oversight group, which includes d**olboeb , d****rugoi , p**lushev ** , o****legmakarenko.ru ** That’s exactly why I didn’t take what was happening seriously at first: I know for a fact that neither we nor the oversight group have that kind of data. At best, we can only see the user’s account number. A surname is known only if the person signs something like “Donation from Ivanov I.I.” I myself wouldn’t mind knowing more about the people supporting RosPil—their age, gender, region. But unfortunately, that data is unavailable. There were two theories: (realistic) Some journalists simply googled posts and tweets saying “I sent money to RosPil,” and then tracked down the phone number. (conspiratorial) Some guys deliberately transferred 100 rubles each to start a scandal: “Aha, they sold my data.” The second theory was never seriously considered—it’s very easy to prove that we could not have sold the data, because we don’t have it. Then the number of complaints grew to a couple dozen and, most importantly, among those contacting me were people I know personally. It became absolutely clear that this was not made up. So we asked Yandex for an explanation. And I should say that when I opened the account, I asked the Yandex people a direct question: This project definitely won’t appeal to the Kremlin thieves, and sooner or later their envoys will come knocking. To whom, and on what grounds, can transaction data be disclosed? To which I received a direct answer: Upon a formal written request from the security services, we will provide them with all the data. Never otherwise, and never to anyone else. That reassured me. Paper is paper. Once it exists, it can’t be hidden afterward. It would be clear who was interested, and one could ask: what exactly are you interested in, and why? A request must have some grounds, after all. There has to be some formal document saying: Navalny is funded by the CIA The CIA is funded by Navalny Navalny is funded by bin Laden bin Laden is funded by Navalny RosPil is a terrorist network Navalny eats children everyone who transfers money to RosPil eats children RosPil was created to stop Medvedev from dancing and take away his iPad. So imagine my surprise when Yandex replied: information concerning your account was transferred to the FSB of the Russian Federation at their official request.
This stunned me to the core. I had spent so long trying to get these guys’ attention.
For the past three years, I’ve regularly sent this agency various complaints and statements. And not once. Not once did these mighty fighters for banknotes deem my writings worthy of their attention.
Every time I was told, “The FSB doesn’t deal with that” “we don’t have time, we’re busy carving up another billion in a smuggling case” Once, over all that time, they took a statement from me on one of the “Gazprom” cases, but that was the end of it. The good old cash-filled briefcase case worked perfectly.
The pointless crooks in uniform from the FSB are not interested in
How officials at the Ministry of Regional Development steal
How money is stolen in military procurement at Rosoboronpostavka
They were not interested in a single corrupt tender uncovered and challenged by RosPil.
The crooks from the FSB are also not interested in
why the dear son of FSB Director Bortnikov ended up heading VTB North-West Bank
why the dear son of former FSB Director Patrushev ended up heading Rosselkhozbank
why the dear son of Deputy Prime Minister Ivanov ended up heading the insurance company SOGAZ For some reason, the FSB of the Russian Federation is not interested in what kind of services the security agencies provide to banks and corporations in exchange for these dizzying career leaps by their children. In recent years, a strange pattern has emerged here: there are more and more failures in intelligence, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism, but at the same time the prosperity of the security service chiefs and their family members keeps rising. Maybe this is where we should look for CIA intrigues? And maybe it’s time for the FSB of the Russian Federation to remember that the RosPil project appeared precisely because the FSB OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION DOESN’T DO A DAMN THING EXCEPT MAKE MONEY. Hundreds of people dig through government procurement records, and thousands send money to the project because there is no hope whatsoever in the FSB, the police, the Department for Economic Security, the prosecutor’s office, the Investigative Committee, and all the other freeloaders. The damn threat these freeloaders see is precisely that people are joining together on their own to fight corruption—and even funding that fight themselves. The second act of the Marlezon Ballet. The Nashi movement. Let’s not speculate. All the information about Nashi’s involvement in calling RosPil donors, I—like you—received from those good and restless people who took the trouble to investigate the matter, and for that they have my thanks. Let’s establish the facts: The FSB requested data on RosPil donors After the request, donors began receiving phone calls from people using false names and fictitious media outlets. Information about such calls has been compiled here and here (includes an audio recording) 3. One of the women making the calls has contact details matching those of a commissar in the Nashi movement. Once, Twice.
(Update: Yulia’s email, ICQ, and even her surname had to be blacked out at the demand of the LiveJournal administration)
4. Yulia is clearly not a career FSB employee. And if it really was she who made the calls, rather than an FSB officer using her as cover, then there has been a data leak.
5. The Nashi movement has lately been very preoccupied with the RosPil project and with me personally, as anyone who occasionally checks the LiveJournal top posts could see (and still can): the relevant posts by idiotic Nashi activists and their paid bloggers are there permanently.
6. The Nashi movement receives substantial financial support from the state budget. As a whole, and in the case of individual activists, it has repeatedly been suspected of organizing political provocations.
That’s all for now.
Based on these facts, life experience, and deduction analytical ability, we can draw conclusions and make assumptions.
Here are mine:
Hundreds of people participate in the RosPil project, and more than 15,000 finance it. In effect, it is the largest civil society project in the country. Its independence irritates the Kremlin crooks.
The FSB of the Russian Federation was used for a kind of legal theft of data on the project’s donors.
The stolen data was passed on to the Nashi movement, which traditionally does all the dirty work and gives officials the chance to bat their eyes and say: it wasn’t us, it was them—the Nashi kids.
Corrupt and commercialized though the FSB of the Russian Federation may be, they are not so stupid as to expose themselves by handing this data to Nashi on their own initiative.
Therefore:
The FSB of the Russian Federation received an order from the country’s political leadership—which is precisely those same Kremlin crooks (see point 1).
Everything else can only be confirmed or disproved through an official investigation. That is easy enough to do:
find out on what grounds the FSB requested the data
establish from which phones the calls were made
identify Dikhtyar’s voice and compare it with the voice on the recording
and so on
At this point we should move on to the third act of the Marlezon Ballet:
This is blogger Medvedev, whom some people also call “President Medvedev,” because, by a strange coincidence, this blogger gets to have his picture taken in front of a malachite fireplace. Quite recently he was engaged in his favorite and only activity: talking irresponsibly. At a meeting with the internet community, commenting on the recent attacks on LiveJournal, he said: that *both internet resources and the country’s leadership suffer from this: the former see in the hackers’ actions the “machinations of the authorities, the FSB, the presidential administration, the CIA,” while the latter “do not know how to react to this, and do not want to be reproached for stifling everything.” Y*es, yes. Now tell me once again about people imagining intrigues. *Let me remind you that both the FSB—which found nothing more important to do than hunt for RosPil’s donor data—and the presidential administration, where all this disgusting crookery and thievery sits directing Nashi, are subordinate precisely to blogger Medvedev. I suggest that blogger Medvedev answer for his words and finally decide: is he capable of controlling those who are legally subordinate to him? If he is, then let him do the job he is paid for. If not, then please, leave the malachite fireplace alone. The final part of the Marlezon Ballet, in brief: We have no complaints against Yandex. They honored, and continue to honor, all agreements. In this situation too, they behaved as correctly as possible. We will continue to use Yandex.Money as a way of collecting funds for RosPil; As we can see, not registering a legal entity as a way to avoid endless inspections by various crooks no longer works. Therefore, I will open a foundation, and if necessary we will continue collecting donations through it. This will optimize taxation and give all of you more ways to monitor how funds are spent; We will appeal to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Investigative Committee, the FSB, and blogger Medvedev, demanding an investigation into what happened. We will also ask Yandex to do the same; On behalf of the close-knit RosPil team, I apologize to everyone whose personal data ended up in the hands of crooks and fraudsters; On behalf of the close-knit RosPil team, I express deep gratitude to everyone who conducted their own investigation of what happened, supported us, and took what happened as a signal to help and participate even more actively. Update: Anton Nosik published some interesting statistics on payments to RosPil. I didn’t know them myself—I need to learn how to use the Yandex.Money interface properly. There were 9 donations above 15,000 rubles, totaling 482,680 rubles. There were another 29 transfers exceeding 10,000 rubles (38 in total). Altogether, there were 106 transfers of more than 5,000 rubles. There were 824 transfers of more than 1,000 rubles. Another 630 transfers were for exactly 1,000 rubles (for a total of 1,454 transfers in the range from 1,000 to 100,000 rubles). All the remaining contributions, numbering 12,336, were in the range from 999 rubles down to kopecks. Among them were 362 transfers for less than one ruble. Update 2: the post was unavailable for three days because LiveJournal’s conflict commission froze it for publishing the personal data of a “Nashi girl.”