At every meeting with voters, I’m asked why I consider it so important for officials to publicly explain the origins of their property. Yes, I do want to become the first mayor whose team members will report to Muscovites not only on their income, but will also be required to explain where a given asset came from if that asset (bank accounts, lifestyle) clearly does not match their level of income. What’s more, I have long believed, and still believe, that Russia should ratify Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption and add an article on “Illicit Enrichment” to the Criminal Code. I’m not the only one who understands how important and effective these rules are. For example, United Russia (the ruling political party) understands this perfectly well too and is doing everything possible to make sure Article 20 is never ratified. They know exactly what it would mean for them. Let’s look at a specific case using the “team” of government official Sobyanin as an example. There is one Alexander Gorbenko:
http://www.mos.ru/authority/vice/6/ A rather pointless bureaucrat whose name you most often hear in the context of “Moscow City Hall has banned such-and-such public event.” This is the very same Gorbenko who is responsible for making sure Muscovites are forbidden from gathering in the streets, except to praise Putin and Sobyanin. Gorbenko is also Sobyanin’s point man for lies and propaganda. He is the one running the massively loss-making Moscow TV channels TV Center and Moskva 24, on which we spend about 7 billion rubles a year, so that we can be told how wonderful Sobyanin is, that there are no traffic jams in Moscow, and that the city’s clinics are amazingly free of lines. As you can see from Monsieur Gorbenko’s biography, he has been circling around budget money for 13 years now. Quite successfully, as we can see. Moscow Region, Domodedovo District, village of Bityagovo Map http://maps.yandex.ru/-/CVb45G4q
The hard life of a civil servant has brought Sobyanin’s deputy a wonderful 2-hectare plot of land, with a huge beautiful house, landscaping, a pond, and various outbuildings.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQMjViQkJfbDRhVWM/edit?usp=sharing purchased in 2006, when Gorbenko was working at the state-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper http://www.mos.ru/authority/vice/6/
Several neighboring plots, with a total area of more than 4,000 sq. m, are registered in the names of Gorbenko’s son and wife 808 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQQ3M4U2tjREk1Rkk/edit?usp=sharing 1,185 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQZHBwcjFiU2VjeU0/edit?usp=sharing 952 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQT0NLUVNMNzgxLUU/edit?usp=sharing 1,300 square meters https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQNGRoZmZxbUVIT3M/edit?usp=sharing They were purchased later, after Gorbenko had already begun “toiling away” on Sobyanin’s team.
Video from our wonderful quadcopter
http://youtu.be/CErhqAABDzs A review of government official Gorbenko’s financial disclosures shows that although he has had a decent income (7 million rubles a year) ever since Muscovites started paying his salary out of their own pockets,
http://declarator.org/person/843/
http://www.mos.ru/authority/activity/citygov/index.php?id_14=24984 that income in no way explains such a beautiful life behind such a high fence. To acquire (and build) a property like this, official Gorbenko would have had to neither eat nor drink for several years. And he definitely would not have had enough for a Lexus LS 600H passenger car costing 5.7 million rubles—almost equal to his annual income. An analysis of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities database does not suggest that Gorbenko himself or his wife were involved in business. Apparently, they just found buried treasure. What I’m getting at is that this kind of “government official,” “Gorbenko,” instead of doing what his position requires and earning his large salary (which we pay), spends his time stealing making money through dubious means. That takes up 80% of his time: they come up with a scheme, talk it over, get it approved, pay kickbacks, carve it up, make sure no one else is left out, and so on. Fraud requires administration too—and a lot of it. The remaining 20% goes to banning rallies and issuing instructions on exactly what fake stories should be pushed on TV. So when is he supposed to work? And then we wonder why, with a budget of 1.6 trillion rubles, Moscow still has so many problems. Who is supposed to solve them when all efforts are focused on skimming off that 1.6 trillion? I would very much like to hear an explanation from government official Sobyanin about what he thinks of his deputy’s disproportionate wealth. Does he, for example, have any desire to dismiss him pending clarification of the circumstances? As for the rest of us, there is only one road forward: if we want people leading the city who will finally start fighting corruption, and for whom the distinction between “official” and “unofficial” income is meaningless, then we need to join the election campaign right now. http://team.navalny.ru/ No one is going to make the city and the country better for you. Gorbenkos like this are not afraid of just one Navalny. When thousands of Navalnys take to the streets with their election campaign, that’s when everything will change. Please share this post. Citizens should know everything about the hardships of public service. P.S. Our furious Zhora from the Anti-Corruption Foundation, who takes every bureaucrat’s palace as a personal challenge, has created a special website where you can anonymously send us information about the enormous estate of a “servant of the people” if you have such information. http://map.navalny.ru/ It’s simple. Go to the site, find the property on the map that you know something about. Leave all the information you have.
We check all of it.