This was the conversation our press secretary had this morning: **- ***Alexei, are you going to comment to Interfax on the new criminal case against you? You and Interfax are slow; I’ve already commented on this case to everyone. - No, this is another case. The third one. The Investigative Committee just announced it.* And sure enough: The Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has opened a criminal case under Part 1 of Article 286 of the Russian Criminal Code against former director of the Kirov Region Department of State Property Konstantin Arzamastsev for abuse of office in the sale of regional state property. This fact was uncovered by investigators during the investigation of the criminal case accusing A. Navalny and P. Ofitserov of embezzling property from the enterprise Kirovles. The investigation established that in the fall of 2010 K. Arzamastsev, while serving as director of the Kirov Region Department of State Property, signed an order to privatize the 25.5% stake in OJSC Urzhum Distillery owned by the region, consisting of 22,698 registered uncertificated common shares, by selling it at auction at a substantially undervalued starting price of 95,370,000 rubles. At the same time, the official knew that in reality the distillery was one of the most successful and profitable not only in the Kirov Region but in Russia as a whole, and that the real market value of the state’s stake in the plant was no less than 197 million rubles. Despite this, K. Arzamastsev, acting on behalf of the Kirov Region, concluded with the winner of the announced tender for the sale of the plant—the director of one of the private organizations in the city of Kirov—a purchase agreement for the distillery shares at the auction price of 98,370,000 rubles. As a result of K. Arzamastsev’s deliberate actions in issuing the order and concluding the share purchase agreement, the property interests of society and the state protected by law were substantially violated, which resulted in the regional budget receiving 98,630,000 rubles less in revenue. As part of the investigation of this criminal case, investigators intend to examine the possible involvement of other officials of the Kirov Region government in the commission of this crime, including former adviser to the Governor of the Kirov Region Alexei Navalny. http://sledcom.ru/actual/271784/ Well, now I can’t even make a joke. Twitter has already exhausted every possible wisecrack on the subject. Everything from "The IC will investigate Navalny’s possible involvement in Dumbledore’s death" to "The IC has launched the RosNavalny project. Now every resident of the country can check Navalny’s involvement in this or that crime". The shares were sold in October 2010. I finished my work in the Kirov Region and left for good in February 2010. By June 2010, I had already gone to Yale. While I was in Kirov, the sale of the Urzhum distillery was included in the privatization plan once, in 2009 (by the previous government). And partly thanks to me, the plant was removed from the plan, which was widely covered in the local press. After that episode and until my departure, the sale of the shares was not discussed at all. And privatization and the sale of state property had absolutely nothing to do with me at any point. So they can keep checking that “involvement” until they turn blue. As for the substance of the case, insofar as it can be understood from the Investigative Committee’s statement, what is truly astonishing is their use of the concepts of an "inflated/deflated" price. That is basically their main basis for opening cases. Whether it’s assessing the real value of a distillery or the cost of freight transportation, an Investigative Committee investigator can apparently do it all without any expert evaluation. Well, great—if the Investigative Committee is staffed with such distinguished pricing experts, then let them review all the procurements examined and successfully challenged by RosPil ( Navalny’s anti-corruption project targeting suspicious state procurement). I assure you, there’s an inflated price everywhere. And not just procurements—take, for example, RosPil’s case involving the sale of real estate in Yekaterinburg. Buildings in the city center were sold for 6.9 million rubles when their market price was more than 22 million. We even proved in arbitration court that the auction was illegal, and we won the case. It’s a ready-made criminal case. Today we’ll send all the documents to the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee and then let you know what they say. And one last small (tiny, tiiiiny) detail in the distillery privatization case that tells me it doesn’t have much of a future: the buyer of the privatized stake was the leading local United Russia party figure in Kirov. For some reason, the Investigative Committee didn’t mention that. Update: Yesterday’s "Echo" (Echo of Moscow, a radio station)
