Right now, investigators from the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia are seizing documents at our Anti-Corruption Foundation. Things like this have long since stopped being the kind of news anyone pays much attention to, so I won’t dwell on it. A government built on corruption, naturally, has to fight the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m writing to let you know that RosPil staffer Anatoly Shashkin yesterday upset Alexander Shestun, the head of the Serpukhov district in the Moscow region, at the Moscow Regional Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, and succeeded in having the order canceled for the purchase of a Mercedes-Benz E-Class 4MATIC AMG worth 2.5 million rubles.
I wrote about this in detail here and included a video in which district head Shestun justifies buying a sporty Mercedes and says that, really, he wouldn’t mind a "little helicopter" either. Just as a warning to Mr. Shestun: we’ll block the "helicopter" too if he’s serious about it. This is where I usually remind you that RosPil and the Anti-Corruption Foundation operate on your donations, and you alone fund them. If you like what we do and have a couple hundred rubles to spare, you can go here and help us. But I can’t end on this good news, because I have to tell you with outrage that the regular stars of my little journal from the government of the Chechen Republic are acting exactly according to the principle shown in that well-known picture. And they’re buying a B***MW 750Li xDrive Sedan SKD *** for 4 million rubles.
http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/common_info/show?notificationId=6422621 Even though, as you may remember, they bought the same one not long ago. You can simply worry about it and, for the millionth time, ask yourself the rhetorical question: why the hell should I be buying them a 4-million-ruble BMW? Or you can take a real step and support our bill to ban officials from buying cars costing more than 1.5 million rubles, and help get it put to a vote in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament).
There’s very little left to do. Instructions on what to do are here.