From the very beginning, this whole story — Navalny found to have an undeclared company in Montenegro — looked very strange. I mean, of course, from the outset I knew perfectly well that I had no company in Montenegro and had never registered one. As far as I’m concerned, this whole Montenegro story goes back to 2007, when an acquaintance of mine suggested I invest in the construction of a couple of houses in Montenegro. The idea seemed good, and I tried to bring in a couple of acquaintances as co-investors, including m_gaidar. At the time, non-residents could not simply buy land there, so our plan — like that of any other buyers — was to register a local company in order to purchase land through it, but only if we found a good plot. After that, I went to Montenegro a couple of times (for two days each) and realized that land had already become insanely expensive and the project was too risky. The project was shelved, and I have not been to Montenegro once since 2007. Then the 2008 crisis hit, real estate prices collapsed everywhere, and in Montenegro they collapsed so badly that I still breathe a sigh of relief when I think back on the whole idea. Those of you curious enough to have read my hacked email know that this is exactly how things stood. And then, out of nowhere, a legal entity surfaces that I supposedly founded and concealed all this time. Strange. See for yourselves: The company was “found” at a suspiciously convenient moment — during my election campaign. And the people who “found” it and pushed this whole story were petty crooks from one of the Kremlin’s foundations, specializing in smear jobs, internet bots, forgeries, falsification, and “analytical reports” so dubious that even other Kremlin people are embarrassed to circulate them. For example, before the Moscow election they came out with some powerful analysis claiming that Melnikov of the Communist Party would take second place. This foundation is headed by a conman named Kostin, a former head of the Domestic Policy Directorate of the Presidential Administration, and he and his wife basically run a family business cashing in on Kremlin grants. For example, the year before last, Olga Kostina’s “human rights” “organization” received 160 million rubles in grants (about $5 million at the time), and then itself became a grant-distributing operator;
The direct promoter of the story was a so-called “political-trash blogger,” former Youth Yabloko member Stanislav Apetyan, whom I remember for whining his way to Yashin asking for a salaried position, talking about how much he hated Putin the thief and bloodsucker — and then, when he failed to get paid, went off to work as a “paid Kremlin blogger.”
So, my hacked correspondence has been the main subject of this political trash’s posts for several years now. He and his colleagues chewed over the Montenegro story a hundred times, published the emails a million times, and I had no doubt whatsoever that they had combed through every Montenegrin registry inside and out looking for any trace of me. And then, all of a sudden, they “find Navalny’s company” in an open online registry.
Amazing, right? 3. So amazing that at one point I thought it was theoretically possible that I had forgotten about registering a company. So I immediately asked Gaidar: Did we by any chance register a company together in the Montenegrin town of Bar? She quite reasonably replied: Maybe you’re forgetful, but there’s no way I could have forgotten something like that. How do you forget registering a company abroad? Most importantly: why register a company if there was no deal for which it was being registered? 4. Things got even stranger after news appeared out of nowhere: The Montenegrin Tax Administration confirms the registration of Navalny’s company. Montenegrin officials issuing a substantial press release in English that quickly, that efficiently, and for no obvious reason??!! In August?! Everything humanity knows about Montenegrins in general, and their officials in particular, contradicts this. A civil servant in Montenegro is someone who sits at their desk and suffers endlessly from being unable to immediately lie down and fall asleep. In August they all go on vacation together, and getting any document at all is practically impossible. Jumping ahead, I can say that we made considerable efforts, through local lawyers and journalists, to find the official responsible for issuing that press release. He simply does not exist. Try looking through all the news from that period and find even one name. There is none. Try finding that press release on the official website of any government body, for example the tax service. You won’t find anything. It’s just a PDF in English that was circulated with reference to the dubious news agency “Prime”. Our official request asking them to confirm authorship of the release has gone unanswered for over a month now. 5. It was VERY strange why the Moscow City Election Commission treated “Navalny’s foreign assets” so leniently. That should have been automatic grounds for removing me from the ballot. But it was obvious to the naked eye that all official figures were extremely reluctant to comment on the Montenegro story. I can’t even say the federal TV channels really stomped all over the issue. Mostly it was the usual screamers on Kostin’s and Izvestia’s payroll: “TV host” Solovyov, “journalist” Dorenko, “politician” Limonov. After all our “Pekhting” exposés (a reference to exposing officials’ undeclared foreign property), the logical thing would have been to devour me whole over a concealed company. And yet, on the whole, the federal authorities were clearly keeping their distance from the story. Only at the very end of the campaign, apparently after seeing the real poll numbers and deciding to use their main weapon, they dragged Arch-Crook Putin onto the idiot box, where he mumbled something along the lines of: “there are scandals surrounding this gentleman: first companies abroad, then distilleries go missing.” 6. And it finally became clear that this was all fabricated after the same Kremlin PR operatives started spreading the story through the same trash outlets, Izvestia and LifeNews: The well-known economic publication Dienstagische Kurant published a note on August 29 stating that blogger and candidate for mayor of the capital Alexei Navalny had instructed lawyer Natalya Karadzic to resolve his problems with Montenegro’s tax authorities. ... According to the Dutch newspaper, Karadzic has “good connections among Montenegrin officials and businessmen, which will likely help her liquidate the company retroactively.” Dienstagische Kurant also reports that she was offered a fee of 30,000 euros for the work. http://lifenews.ru/#!news/118601 a) this well-known economic publication is some tiny German newspaper that writes about problems in the Dutch community. b) I knew for a fact that lawyer Karadzic had been paid not 30,000 euros, but 580 euros.
So yes, for exactly these reasons we initially quite reasonably assumed that the crooks had simply hacked the Montenegrin registry. That version turned out to be wrong, and we decided to wait for the documents. After that, we spent a long time dealing with a bewildered notary who was hearing for the first time that he had supposedly certified documents in my presence. Then we spent even longer dealing with the registration and tax authorities, who behaved very strangely but did everything possible to prevent me from obtaining the documents for “my company” before September 8. But once we got the documents, everything fell into place: Here are the “signatures of Navalny and Gaidar” on those very documents for the Montenegrin company:
When they sent them to me, it became instantly clear: this was simply a forgery. Maria Gaidar also immediately said: this is 100% not my signature. Here are excerpts from the handwriting analysis we ordered right away, from an expert center with all the necessary licenses and the authority to provide expert opinions for courts, investigators, and anyone else. You can compare this signature yourself with the signature in any of my international passports. Or you can find plenty of documents I signed in the commercial court database (or here on LiveJournal).
So this whole “Montenegrin company of Navalny and Gaidar” is nothing more than an ordinary forgery, manufactured on the basis of stolen correspondence. I assume the documents were fabricated and then, for a bribe, inserted into the Montenegrin registry. We are now conducting an international handwriting examination, as well as one in Montenegro itself, after which we will demand that a criminal case be opened in Montenegro over the document forgery. Most likely, all of this was organized by the same Kremlin clowns I wrote about above: Kostin and company. As this shows once again, the regime’s unlimited financial resources and enormous state capabilities are no help to it: all it can do when it comes to discrediting political opponents is steal the money allocated for “countermeasures,” then produce a fake that gets exposed a month later. I very much hope that the Montenegrin part of this “special operation” was also handled by Kostin’s PR people and not the security services. I’d rather not think they have degraded to the point where they can’t even forge a signature properly. The person who now looks stupidest in this whole situation is Putin, whom they hauled onto television and made repeat all this filth and fakery. So that’s the story. I would like to thank all the citizens of Russia and Montenegro who have helped, and continue to help, get to the bottom of this. I very much hope that all the media outlets that covered this story and broadcast the tale of “Navalny’s Montenegrin company” across the whole country will issue retractions on the same scale. Special thanks as well to those who trusted me from the very beginning, did not believe this nonsense, and did not start doubting my words. That matters to me. This story should be a good lesson for everyone, and it gives us new insight into what the Kremlin crooks will do to protect their fur vaults (a sarcastic reference to officials’ hidden luxury wealth).