So, let’s take a look at what the thieving United Russia gang settled in the Sosny dacha cooperative has managed to come up with in response over the past 24 hours. So far, the media response looks pretty weak. We have a post by Potupchik along the lines of: “Navalny is just jealous, he’s a criminal himself and wants the same kind of dacha, and one expert said he was wrong.” A couple of commissioned posts from paid bloggers basically rehashing Potupchik’s text. A post by the well-known cook Stalik, who writes that one of the United Russia dachas belongs to his friend, whom he wants to defend. The friend is not named. The text is very long and very strange. A pile-up of all sorts of nonsense: I’m Azerbaijani, which means the nationalist Navalny wants to kill and deport my children. And if he’s fighting corruption, then let him go to court and win there against everyone, the way I won against everyone in Uzbekistan. I have a dacha too, so what now, should it be filmed from a hang glider? You need to fight for truth with truth. My friend is completely innocent. We all sit here staring into our monitors.
Precisely because of its incoherence, and because cook Stalik rather handily gives his friend away—only making things worse for him with the line, “When I met my current friend, the one A. Navalny writes about, several years ago, that house so beautifully photographed from an aircraft was already standing there”—I think this is not a Volodin-ordered hit piece, but genuinely a clumsy attempt to cover for a United Russia friend. 4. More interesting: Gazeta.ru threw itself onto the barricades to defend Volodin’s super-dacha. Opposition figure Alexei Navalny published another batch of revelations on his blog on Wednesday. Experts consider Navalny’s claims unfounded. As its experts, Gazeta.ru brought in the guy from Potupchik’s post, as well as Kostin—the head of a Kremlin-linked NGO and Volodin’s adviser (!!) (I wrote here about this swindler and crook). 5. And now the most interesting thing, and obviously the most effective thing these Kremlin hangers-on can do. Articles already published by several media outlets were simply taken down: Reports on Alexei Navalny’s investigation into the dachas of senior officials disappeared from the websites of the newspapers Kommersant and Moskovsky Komsomolets. Copies of the articles “A Palace Audit” (Kommersant) and “Navalny Finds the Little Brother of the Ozero Cooperative” (MK) can be found in Google cache. http://lenta.ru/news/2013/11/28/navalny/ An unpleasant situation. First, Kommersant’s deputy editor-in-chief even posts the article on his Facebook
And then this:
http://kommersant.ru/doc/2354294 Strange. Maybe they just had to remove the article about the dachas from the site because the internet was running out of space, and they urgently needed to publish this hugely important piece of news and journalistic scoop? Well then, let that rest on the conscience of the journalists and their editors-in-chief. UPDATE. The article has been restored on the MK website. And in an even better version. Now let’s look at what substantive response our dacha owners have managed to mumble out. I found two clear public responses (both from United Russia member Rudensky): in the newspaper Vedomosti: {C}
Navalny: Volodin and several senior United Russia members failed to declare all their land These plots will appear in the 2013 declarations, one of the landowners promises Read in full
As Rudensky explained to Vedomosti, the cooperative’s decision regarding both his plot and Volodin’s plot was made in February 2013, and therefore this will be reflected in the 2013 declaration. on Rudensky’s own website:
http://www.rudenskiy.ru/novosti/mne-skryvat-nechego.html So, Rudensky and Volodin are telling us: we only began using these plots in 2013, so they only had to appear in the 2013 declaration. Rudensky says he had immense wealth before entering the State Duma, and buying a dacha for 74 million rubles (about $2.2 million at the time) was no big deal for him. It’s both delightful and depressing at the same time. Delightful because it’s so easy, once again, to catch United Russia members lying and once again confirm that they are lying, thieving devils with murky incomes. Depressing because the people running the country are so stupid that they do not understand: poorly prepared lies only make things worse for them. Now let’s look at the map of the plots, the “decision on which was made in February 2013”:
Now the registry extracts for the plots: Ashlapov https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQY0QwTzNXNm9GNGM/edit?usp=sharing Rudensky https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQcGtHVVljR1lJVEk/edit?usp=sharing Neverov https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQbC13bmxTR2o2VkU/edit?usp=sharing Volodin https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B81CwE1TpzJQY1VBQUQxUFg1NkE/edit?usp=sharing As of August 12, 2013, the plots belong to the Sosny dacha cooperative. And here is a Google satellite image dated 05.11.11.
The image clearly shows that as early as November 2011, both Volodin and Rudensky were already controlling and using this land: they had fenced it off, laid out roads, and so on. Volodin had even dug a pond and put up permanent buildings. As one of Rudensky’s colleagues in the State Duma rightly notes: deputies must also report property they use, because the concept of ownership rights includes the rights of possession, use, and disposal of property, State Duma Security Committee deputy chairman and member of the parliamentary income commission Ernest Valeev explained to Vedomosti. In other words: if you fenced it off and started building, declare it. That was not done. They should stop twisting themselves into knots and simply admit the violations, apologize to voters, and resign. Now let’s examine the even more laughable claim: “I was very rich, and everybody knows it.” I don’t know who is supposed to know that. Rudensky’s biography on Rudensky’s own website does not shed much light on the mystery of his wealth either.
http://www.rudenskiy.ru/biografija/biografija.html Let’s establish a few facts: since 1999, United Russia member Rudensky has been living off us and getting paid out of our pockets. So for the last 14 years, he could not have earned anything except his salary. since 2006, parliamentary candidates have had to file property declarations. So in 2006, all of deputy Rudensky’s “wealth” should already have been described and recorded, and it could only have grown through his salary or his wife’s income. Here it is, that wealth, in 2006:
http://declarator.org/person/165/ We see land plots, income of 1.2 million rubles (about $45,000 at the time), and 200,000 rubles (about $7,500) in cash. No shares, no deposits, no stakes in companies. I’m very sorry, but judging by the official declaration, you could say that I am much richer than United Russia member Rudensky. My income is clearly higher. And yet I am nowhere close to being able to build a house like his in a place like that. Now if I told you tomorrow: guys, I bought a house in Spain and a palace outside Moscow. Don’t be surprised, I was a successful businessman and sold my shares and assets. You would quite rightly say to me: dude, what shares and what assets? Here is your election declaration as a candidate for mayor of Moscow. It shows that your asset is a 78.5-square-meter apartment in Maryino. And while your family income is relatively high (9 million rubles), it clearly does not allow you to buy houses in Spain. And you would be absolutely right. So let’s say the same to “successful businessman Rudensky”: R**udensky, you half-baked crook. Stop lying. All your successful United Russia business is bribes and kickbacks. And if you really had wealth, then why didn’t you declare it over the last 9 years? ** And that, basically, is all. As you can see, it takes no effort at all to demolish the pathetic excuses of these United Russia dacha owners. The effort needs to go into campaigning. If Volodin and Co. are taking articles off websites, then let’s answer them by spreading this information across the internet, which 70 million of our fellow citizens use. Let this link be everywhere: http://dacha.fbk.info Click “retweet” here:
Odnoklassniki, VK, Facebook, LiveJournal. Leaflets, a text message to your grandma. Anything that annoys Toad_on_the_Pipe works. Anything works for us.