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with pride and satisfaction, we can now
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report to you on the major work
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we have done regarding a businessman close
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to Putin—a man whom
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people call "Putin's chef," Yevgeny
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Prigozhin. We have already exposed him and
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shown you his real estate,
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worth billions of rubles, his private jet,
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yachts, country house, and several mansions
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in one of the most expensive areas
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of St. Petersburg. But we are not a TV show; we
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do not simply entertain you with pictures
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of palaces and amusing memes. Our lawyers
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have done enormous work and proved that
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Putin's chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was robbing us
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all through Defense Ministry contracts.
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He created a cartel through which
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he won state contracts worth
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23 billion rubles (about $360 million), and at present this is
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the largest cartel uncovered in
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Russian history. We are immensely proud of this, and
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a case has been opened against it
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by the anti-monopoly service. And this was made possible,
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my friends, thanks in part to you
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and the support you provide
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to our foundation.
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Thank you very much. Lyuba, explain
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more clearly: what is a cartel? A cartel is
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an illegal agreement among companies that want
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to keep prices high in the market.
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For example, it would be as if Apple and
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Samsung did not compete with each other but
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instead made an agreement that all their phones
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would cost no less than 100,000 rubles in Russia.
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This happens constantly in
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public procurement, and the result is that
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it is not individual buyers who suffer, but our
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Russian state budget. In Prigozhin's case,
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several supposedly independent
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companies were created that simulated competition but
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at the same time received state contracts at
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the highest possible prices. In fact,
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all of them were and still are part of the empire
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of Putin's chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as was
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established not only by the Anti-Corruption Foundation
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but also by materials from the official
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inspection by the anti-monopoly service. And now
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we will tell you how we found this
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cartel. We constantly review contracts,
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including, as you know, those of the
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Defense Ministry. Among them, a year and a half ago, we
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discovered a group of shell companies. All of
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them had been created shortly before receiving
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billion-ruble state contracts, and they looked
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extremely suspicious. Their license numbers,
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for example, ran consecutively and
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had been issued on the same day. They were registered
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in neighboring offices—literally
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right next door. And the founders and
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directors of these companies were the same
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people. Moreover, all these companies
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behaved in exactly the same way during
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the tenders. In the end, these firms received
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Defense Ministry state contracts worth 23 bil
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317.
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28.29.12, which showed that we had been right
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from the start: all the companies were united in one
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corrupt network and controlled
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by one man—Putin's chef, Yevgeny
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Prigozhin. It turned out that all these
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companies had the same IP address, and through it
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they accessed the electronic tendering
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platforms. And that IP belongs to the company
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LLC Concord Management and Consulting, officially
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registered to Prigozhin's mother, Violetta.
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The email addresses of all these
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companies were registered on the same
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domain, and the contact phone number of the domain owner
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is the phone number of LLC
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Concord Catering Plant, another
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Prigozhin company. It also turned out that all
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the official tender documents of these
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companies were formatted absolutely identically;
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even the extra spaces before
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commas and other minor mistakes matched. But
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most importantly, from the anti-monopoly service we
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received a huge volume of banking
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documents that allowed us to reconstruct the entire
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scheme of Prigozhin's empire. It turned out to involve
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dozens of companies, the main ones being
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Galay and Concord
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Management and Consulting. The bank statements also
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revealed financial
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links between Prigozhin's companies and Defense Ministry
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structures, which were issuing loans
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to each other on some very strange and
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unclear terms. In addition, the
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statements show—look here—that Concord
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Management and Consulting financed
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the participation of Prigozhin's other companies in
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Defense Ministry tenders, which definitively
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confirms that we were right. They are all
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connected; it is essentially a mafia-like
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group. We found quite a lot of links between
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Prigozhin's private companies and
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Defense Ministry companies that indicate their
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coordination in distributing billions from
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the military budget. For example, one of these
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shell companies belonging to Putin's chef established
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a branch directly on a Russian military base in
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Armenia. It is no surprise that later
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they won contracts to service
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that territory. And now an important moment has come:
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we have done our part of the job.
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We found the largest collusive scheme in
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Russian history, reported the suspicious
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companies to the anti-monopoly service, and
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tried to prevent the squandering of
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budget funds. We honestly earned the money that
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you donated to us. Lyuba and Valera, well done.
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Now all the documents are with the
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anti-monopoly service, and we will watch with
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interest whether our state will punish these
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proven corrupt officials
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at last.
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There is a specific article of the Criminal
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Code that provides for punishment for cartel
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collusion; the penalty under it is up to 6 years of imprisonment.
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prison time and enormous fines, and of course
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Putin’s chef should end up in the defendants’ dock
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and be punished. We very much
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hope that this will happen, because the head
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of the Federal Antimonopoly Service recently said himself that we are facing
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today a universal cartelization
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of the Russian
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economy. We know that in such cases, as a rule,
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they are put in an awkward position
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and they always tell us: give us
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the evidence, and we will immediately punish everyone.
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Words about corruption strangling Russia
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are heard
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constantly. The answer is obvious and should be
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as they say,
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symmetrical: the noose around the necks
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of corrupt officials must tighten
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constantly and relentlessly. Well, we have provided that. On the other hand,
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we know that the authorities
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always protect corrupt officials, especially
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those close to Putin. Prigozhin robs us
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from every angle, from school cafeterias to
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army barracks, and nothing happens to him, and
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nothing ever has. More than that, he
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is acting more and more aggressively. Not long
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ago, an attack was carried out on the husband
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of Lyubov Sobol. He was injected
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at the entrance to his apartment building with a syringe containing an unknown
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substance; he lost consciousness and ended up in
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the hospital. The case caused a major public outcry, but
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no investigation was carried out.
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We are sure that behind this attack stands
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Prigozhin, because it happened shortly
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after the release of our video about him and his
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luxury real estate. The antimonopoly service
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must, is obliged to issue
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a decision on Prigozhin this Monday,
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and we very much hope that it will not lose its nerve
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and will see the matter through to the end, because all that remains for them
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is simply to issue a fair
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decision. And in order to help at all
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officials take at least some
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steps toward fighting corruption,
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they need to be pushed: share videos like this
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and go to rallies on June 12.
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Go to the anti-corruption rally in
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your city; links to groups in all
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cities are in the description of this video.
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Help us spread this video, and
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subscribe to our channel here.
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They tell the truth.