Old man Pekhtin seems to think we’re all fools, and also hopes that the all-seeing (but benevolent) eye of the Anti-Corruption Foundation has stopped watching his little schemes. Remember, he said he was going to the States to "look into the case and understand what kind of legal absurdities took place there". And here he is saying in an interview on March 13: I contacted a law firm and asked them to explain what these documents are that Navalny posted—five years old, without my signatures. His company interprets the documents as ownership of some villa. I don’t know what they’re talking about, apparently some house in the countryside that my son was building. There was a land guarantee involved there. And as the lawyers explained to me, a guarantee does not make you the owner. With statements like these, Pekhtin is simply disgracing his fellow dollar millionaires. One would expect them to be more cunning than that.
The very next day (March 14, 2013), after that interview, Pekhtin signed over his share in all three Florida properties he owned to his son as a gift. In doing so, he once again confirmed that he was the formal owner of this property. So the next time he starts spinning tales about it being "just a land guarantee," you journalists—and the broader public as well—should remind him that we have a little document proving otherwise. Bonus. That rare case when the United Russia party can say it fulfilled a citizen’s demand: