Many of you have probably seen the utterly incredible NTV report, "Secret Meetings Between Navalny and His Sponsors Caught on Video."
Or maybe you read about it, because the text version of the broadcast has been aggressively promoted by paid bloggers (what a windfall for them—the budget has grown dramatically over the past few weeks. Right now they’re like struggling performers during the New Year season: “CORPORATE GIGS!”). It’s an absolutely astonishing specimen of lying. I thought nothing could top the moose story. But they managed it: Navalny admits he traveled to the CIA. The very opening of the “report” is already breathtaking: Analysts have no doubt that the Anti-Corruption Foundation was in fact created by Navalny to siphon off money.
And then it goes all in. Footage from hotel cameras showing me and ACF staff meeting, entirely officially, with Guy Verhofstadt—a Member of the European Parliament and leader of the ALDE group. Then there’s a snippet of my terrible English, where I say that we need “practical assistance in conducting investigations.” “Practical assistance,” of course, meant a specific sum of money, NTV adds triumphantly.
Really now. What shocking evidence. Let me disappoint the NTV crowd—and probably reassure all normal people. ACF has completely official and formal cooperation with them: they send requests from the European Parliament to various regulatory bodies in cases where European jurisdictions can be used to go after our crooks. Just as the few decent remaining State Duma deputies write parliamentary inquiries for us in Russia, they do the same in Europe. I’m very sorry to reveal details of an ongoing investigation ahead of time, but since this is where we are, I’ll have to. We need to show what “practical assistance” actually means:
You probably thought we had long since dropped the VTB drilling rigs case? As you can see, thanks to Verhofstadt and Sonia Alfano from the committee on organized crime (for which ACF is very grateful to them), Europol is working on this case. After all, the $160 million stolen from a state-owned bank was transferred into the EU and laundered there. That is a crime under their laws. We have submitted many requests, and there are many cases we want to move forward through Europol, Interpol, the FSA, the SFO, and so on. We will continue to seek help from people willing to help us go after the crooks who rob Russian citizens and move the money abroad. That’s exactly what I wrote about in today’s column. But the accusation of “criminal ties with a Member of the European Parliament” looks like complete nonsense compared with another sensational NTV discovery: As Navalny himself admitted, he did not want to publicize his connections. Including those with the CIA. Alexei Navalny: “When they told me I had to go to America and be photographed, I said to them—are you crazy? And somehow it worked out that I said, let’s line it up with my trip to the CIA and do everything at once. We tried to line it up, but it didn’t work out. So what happened was that I went. I was there for a week, then came back and two days later flew out again.” Why was Navalny meeting with CIA employees, and what instructions was he receiving? Obviously, he was coordinating ‘strategy’ and ‘cover’ with his sponsors. http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/863442/#ixzz2wVD693mj
Listen to the part at 2:30. To the sound of people laughing, I’m telling this story. SUDDENLY switching into rapid Russian—presumably to make it easier for Verhofstadt to understand, because my English with that accent is apparently unbearable for him. This story about the “double trip to the CIA” is well known to many people who know me. I have this bad habit of retelling the same jokes over and over. Esquire magazine decided to photograph me for the cover.
Of course, I happily agreed. Then they said: the photo shoot has to be in New York. So I told them: are you completely insane, flying to America just to be photographed? To which the jokers at Esquire replied: come on, you have to go to the CIA for instructions anyway, so you can combine the trips. And I actually did have to go to Chicago to speak at the U.S.-Russia Business Council, so I said: right, there’s my trip to the CIA, let’s combine them. But the dates didn’t line up, and I ended up flying across the Atlantic four times in one week, including once just for the photo shoot. The famous Martin Schoeller photographed me, and it was worth it. That’s how the joke about me “flying to the CIA twice in one week” was born, and I often tell it when the subject of frequent flying comes up. Sometimes it’s funny. And these crooks at NTV, who no longer know what else to invent against me, simply out of desperation cut out a piece of one of my wiretapped conversations (apparently recorded by the FSB, Russia’s security service), ripped from context (in Russian), inserted it into my conversation with Verhofstadt (in English), and voilà—a sensation: Navalny tells a foreigner about how he was at the CIA. A truly innovative move. I would also recommend that, from the many hundreds of recordings of my conversations that the FSB has, they find a phrase like, “And then the Terminator says, ‘I’ll be back and I’ll kill all of you, including women and small children,’” cut out the part they need, and make a report about how I threaten (or actually kill) women and small children. Or here’s another statement worthy of criminal prosecution. Probably for the first time in my life, after watching this segment, I actually felt like suing NTV for defamation. But 1) I’m not a big fan of those lawsuits in general, and 2) a careful reading of the text shows it was written in a way that makes it impossible to win: “Analysts believe,” “Apparently receives,” “Why does he travel to the CIA?” There are no actual assertions. Vladimir Ashurkov would have a much better chance of suing (if he wants to), because they simply made up some complete nonsense about him—that he rents his apartment for 1 million rubles a month (roughly a very high-end luxury rent). And now they’re blasting everywhere: “Unemployed Ashurkov rents an apartment for a million.” A total lie without the slightest evidence. Though even there, you’d come to court and they’d say: renting an apartment for a million doesn’t damage his reputation. On the contrary, we were praising him. But I’ve come up with a better way to expose the NTV people, and I hope you’ll help me. Go here: http://www.fsb.ru/fsb/webreception.htm Fill out the standard forms In the “text of inquiry” field, write: The NTV television report “Secret Meetings Between Navalny and His Sponsors Caught on Video,” available at http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/863442/, contains information stating that Russian citizen A.A. Navalny, during a conversation with Belgian citizen Guy Verhofstadt, told him that he had visited the U.S. CIA twice. The report also contains claims that Navalny received foreign assistance, allegedly from foreign intelligence services. As evidence, the television company presents audio recordings of Navalny’s conversations. I request that this information be verified, that the complete original recordings be seized from NTV and examined in full, establishing the place, time, participants in the conversations, and their context. I request that these conversations be published in full. If the facts stated by NTV are confirmed, I request that a decision be made to open a criminal case. Send it. The Anti-Corruption Foundation will send a similar but more detailed request. Then we’ll all see what kind of recordings these are and where they came from. Right now it’s very convenient for all these NTV people and paid internet riffraff to go after me—it’s much harder to respond through a blocked blog. So I’m asking everyone to spread this as widely as possible. By the way, blocked posts still make it into the top of LiveJournal. So if we can push this post into the top rankings, people will see it, click on it, and then get: “forbidden.” Pretty great, right? Interest will go up tenfold. During Alexei Navalny’s house arrest, his blog is being run by Yulia Navalnaya and ACF staff.