Navalny’s Circles: The Judicial System (full version)

Friends, thank you very much for coming. For

us, this is very important, both for me and for

the members of my team, to maintain an ongoing

dialogue with professional communities

on one issue or another, and of course the topic of

reforming the law enforcement system,

reforming the judicial system, is something that concerns

Muscovites very deeply. However, it is impossible

to run for the office of Mayor of Moscow

to run for one of the

most important political offices and say nothing

about judicial reform, about

how we want to see it, at least

within

the competence of Moscow as a constituent entity

of the Russian Federation: the system of justices of the peace

falls under its authority, and today I wanted

to talk with you about what needs

to be done, what we want both the judicial

system in Russia and the law enforcement

system in Russia to look like. In fact,

the powers of any constituent region of the Federation,

and especially of Moscow, the capital and a city

of federal significance, are much broader than

you said, and they are written into the Constitution.

We just rarely look at it—we’ve forgotten a little.

And do you think this is how it works

right now? This is exactly how it works now,

although everything functions in a somewhat peculiar

way. I think it is hard to imagine anything more grotesque in the 21st

century, in a civilized country, it seems to me,

than a judicial-and-law-enforcement

system conceived as a single

whole. It is the collapse of law—not simply

as a system of letters and words, but as

a civilizational value, as

a universal regulator of human

relations. Because there cannot be

a judicial-law-enforcement system.

There must be a court as a branch of power, and there must be

a law enforcement system as part

of the executive branch, accountable

to the courts. That is roughly the framework,

the coordinates I see for starting this conversation. And what

specifically can the Mayor of Moscow

do, for example, with the courts, with Olga Yegorova (former head of the Moscow City Court)?

What can Sobyanin do? Well, if

the city of Moscow is a subject

with the right of legislative initiative, and there is

government in this city, Moscow—yes, including

the head of the executive branch, the mayor—

then there is one channel of influence right there. That is,

any authority, whether it is the Mayor of Moscow, whether it is

the president of the country, or the head of a rural

settlement, must of course begin with

self-restraint and be law-

abiding above all, in order to have the right

to demand the same from others later on. In

practice, yes, it turns out that the head

of the city, the mayor of the capital, for example, has

a direct relationship to the police (militsiya, the former Russian police structure), to

appointments, and it is unlikely that anyone would ignore

his orders.

So the mayor appoints police officers too?

Well, again, if there is a court, then one can go

there and say that the police chief

is behaving improperly, that the prefect is behaving

improperly, and any citizen can

do that, let alone the mayor. But if

there is no court—well, a Court with a capital

C, one addressed as “Your Honor,” yes, and one that

meets the criteria of

independence and inviolability,

and acts according to the law—then who does and who does not? For that

there must be a court. If Mayor Navalny

were to lose court cases all the time, that would

be good. Sometimes that would be good, even if

I personally believe there must not be

a situation where everyone knows that suing

the mayor is pointless because against the mayor

you can never win, as it was

exactly right, under Luzhkov (former Mayor of Moscow). Then

the system does not work. But when we speak

about courts, first of all about the federal

courts, I know there is an opinion that

the current personnel selection system

will in no way ever allow us

to arrive at a system in which judges are at least

partly independent. What do you think

about that? Friends, doesn’t it seem to you that

we have just identified the main

problem: that this shell of state

well, of state power, in fact

does not work, and what does work is a system

of informal internal arrangements,

of loyalties—that is, formally we have

one thing written down, but in real life we get

something entirely different. Yes, and moreover

it begins with the registration of those same

crimes; that is, everywhere

there are these loopholes where

what appears to be a system divided into

independent blocks is in fact

built into an absolutely informal

system of independent agreements at

all levels. So what are we

to do about that? We can, after all, rightly

talk a lot about it. These are not even loopholes anymore; this is already

a system—the actual system, precisely.

It is like this today; that is,

the state functions this way in all its

manifestations, including in the sphere

we are discussing, and people are selected

accordingly. Today the main source of replenishment

for the judicial corps is not even people

who have taken off their uniforms—that is, yes, the second most important

source, which in itself is also

not entirely right, when

so many people in uniform come

and then put on judicial robes. But the main

source today—who is it? It is young women and

young men who from a very early age,

essentially from their school years, have been secretaries and assistants

to judges, who, you could say, with their mother’s milk

absorb all this, yes, and they simply do not

realize that it is wrong.

They are convinced that this is exactly how

everything is supposed to be, that there are insiders and there are

Let me interrupt for a second—very often you hear this view

from judges: yes,

court clerks. Well, where else are we supposed to get

them? There’s no other pool of candidates. Although

at least court clerks know the procedure.

And who are we supposed to recruit—lawyers?

The legal profession—lawyers are busy with bribes.

The academic community, meanwhile,

exists completely detached from practice. So what

do you think about this view,

which is in fact being imposed

by the executive branch: that the courts themselves and their

staff are the only кадровый

resource for forming the judiciary? It seems to me

that this is a mistake. In fact, those

judges who think this way are mistaken, because

the practice of countries around the world

shows that the judicial system should

draw, first and foremost,

from the legal community, from academia, from circles like

civil society. But when it comes to

court employees, even in some

countries there is simply a cooling-off period

before someone can take up a judicial post if that person

worked in the court apparatus for a certain number of

years: they must either work elsewhere

or complete further study, and so on. And in

my view, this issue of

forming the judicial corps, if

it is resolved, is one of the key

tasks—including, it seems to me,

for an elected mayor, since he can

at least influence it. It was rightly

said, and I saw in your

program the point about the formation of justices of the peace

and introducing elections for them. But are people

ready for that?

We included this in the program, and I

absolutely believe that Moscow residents are ready

to elect their justice of the peace by direct

vote. There is a lot of debate here, and

a lot of criticism directed at us, and people try

to prove that a judge is, after all, some kind of

high-level professional possessing some sort of

sacred knowledge. Although from my point

of view, a justice of the peace does not need any sacred

knowledge at all.

Still, the formation of justices of the peace

does, in principle, presuppose

certain requirements for candidates, which currently

exist under federal law, and

second,

in some regions there are

public opinion studies

showing

that the population is ready

to elect justices of the peace. Yes, this kind of

transparency, which is closer to an

elective system than an appointive one,

should exist under any method of granting

judges their powers. That is obvious. But I want

to return, Alexei, to what you

said about what people in the judiciary say.

Why should the judicial corps be formed from clerks and assistants?

That is what they

say, and in fact they say it very sincerely. And

this is a very deeply rooted

idea. Spell out what the real, not formal,

criteria are today. After all, what is the criterion now?

A judge is considered to be working well if everything is in

order from the standpoint of procedural

requirements: all the papers are filed in

the proper order and on time,

the whole hearing went as expected—'All rise, court is now in session,'

everything was said as it should be, the parties sat in their

places, questions were asked,

what more do you need? The court assessed everything in its totality.

But this 'process' is not really a process at all;

it is external formalism, yes.

Process is about something else. If we are talking

about judicial process, it means adversarial proceedings

between equal parties, and a judge as an

independent arbiter who helps them

present their position. That is what

process is. But that is not the process they mean

when they talk like this—they mean this

external procedure. And the second criterion,

again in practice, is that a judge is good if

their decisions are 'stable,' meaning they are not

overturned by higher courts. But

what if—heaven forbid—the higher

instance was wrong and the judge was right? That is the first point. Second,

if we deprive a judge of the right

to have an independent opinion, then that is no longer a judge.

So, is there a pool of candidates now? Where

should we draw them from? From the same place the

civilized world draws them from, exactly as was rightly

said: the bar, legal scholars,

lawyers, and, as they used to say, from the broader

national economy—that is, from the legal

community in all its aspects, those who

are ready. But in order

to get into the courts today, you need to have

the right connections. I have dealt with this myself; I have already

spoken about it and worked on these problems. So,

a young woman comes along; she did not get into some

university, and there are always notices on court doors

saying they need clerks,

couriers, and so on. She gets a job there

as a clerk. At first she works in the

court office, then later

it turns out she is smart and writes without grammatical mistakes.

After some time, the court chair

takes notice of her, and when he likes

that she is efficient and writes well, he

helps her enroll in law school.

Five or six years pass,

she studies part-time, gains the required experience,

reaches the necessary age, and then she comes to me

and says: 'Hello, I’ve brought

my application. I want to become a judge.'

'Tell me,

please, are you married? No. Do you have children?

'Of course not.' Why 'of course'? Children do not

appear because of a stamp in a passport. How

are you going to hear family cases

involving the fate

of a child? Of course there is no answer. Second question:'

Do you know how to conduct an interrogation? Of course. And where

did you learn that? As for me, I keep the record—they

ask the questions, and I, well, record it

so it stays in my head. I say, my dear, I

see it on television, uh, the way they show

the figure skating championships, but I

have never—not once. Everyone explains the mistakes, but I have never

declared any desire to take part. Well,

how can that be? First a person should work

as a court clerk, then as an assistant

to an investigating magistrate, then as an

investigator, then as a deputy

prosecutor, then as a defense lawyer, and only then

not before around the age of

—so that they have seen everything from all sides and

gained a certain amount of both professional and

life experience. When girls come in

to court straight from university, they know

nothing about life, not just the law.

It is understandable that they do not know—there was nowhere to learn it—but

they understand nothing about life

at all.

Every judge has an annual target—200 cases a

year must be delivered.

I have never seen a judge like that. But

if you calculate it empirically, yes, then

there are no acquittals—well, there are none; the courts are without

acquittals, if you do not count

jury trials. And, by the way, magistrates' courts. And why

are there acquittals in magistrates' courts? Because

there are many cases there where the state has no particular

interest, so accordingly one can

acquit. Why?

You see, the second thing is, uh, this:

the ferocity of the punishments being imposed

even regardless of guilt and the degree

of culpability—simply a ferocity that

is disproportionate to everything, to any

legal criteria, and even from the point of view of

common sense. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact

that this law enforcement system

has fused together, and moreover it kind of

overwhelms the judiciary, because

the judge understands that the important people are always those

who brought the case to them. They will keep watch; if anything happens,

they will make trouble for the judge. So one has to

conform to what is expected from that

side—that is all. Judges themselves say directly

that we have very few

acquittals because

if a case has made it to court, then that means everything

is settled. If there were any problems, it should have

fallen apart at the investigation stage; if

it did not fall apart, then they did not lock someone up for nothing. We

all know that, yes—and we have always had 'enemies of the people' (a Soviet-era political label)

around, and all of this is very persistent, very much alive.

It really is. Well, cases do reach—what I

mean is, cases reach court

only because in our system

the defense is probably in a more

humiliated position compared with

law enforcement agencies.

Law enforcement agencies themselves have

the right to obtain evidence; they have

a great many powers for that, whereas the bar

has virtually none at all. Who today are our

most

active authors of legislative

initiatives? Even those who formally do not have such a right:

the Investigative Committee

and the Prosecutor General's Office. And in what

direction are they pushing things in this sphere

of criminal procedure? Only in

one direction: they are taking us back to

the inquisitorial spirit of the totalitarian era.

And where are the alternative

legislative initiatives from those

official actors whose proposals cannot simply

be ignored? Speaking of that initiative,

I wanted to add

that it was absolutely right to say

that

a fundamental

reform of the procedure for appointing judges

and ensuring their independence is necessary, but it is clear

that this is a very long-term undertaking. Besides

how the judicial system is formed, there is

substantive law itself—criminal

law, administrative law—and there is procedural

law; that is what was really being discussed, yes.

If the rights

of the legal profession are changed, that will affect outcomes even with the current

judicial corps.

The consequences of this situation with the courts

can be remedied, for example, through

case reviews over the course of

decades, yes, because it is obvious that

there are a great many unjust convictions, and

people are simply sitting in prison, including

—Olga will back me up—an enormous

number, tens of thousands of people, are imprisoned

after being improperly convicted. It seems to me

that an amnesty initiative from the city of Moscow

for those cases that are most likely

to have been

fabricated, and that do not pose too great a

danger to the public, would be a very

important initiative.

Within the expert community, many well-developed

good and sound proposals do not receive

implementation, including under the formal

pretext—which I return to again—that there is no

subject with the right of legislative initiative

ready to defend them in such a way that they

could not simply be dismissed out of hand. Trial by jury—

the systematic destruction of trial by jury—

this is not only against

justice; it is also a distrust of people, of

citizens, including Muscovites (residents of Moscow). What is this supposed to mean—

that they, too, are incapable of understanding, that they can

be intimidated, and so on? These are

insulting statements, this kind of

blanket smear, used in part to cover up

the systematic, systematic reduction of trial by jury

to some negligible margin,

which is what we already have today. There are

alternative proposals in the expert

community; there are, there are such measured

that don’t require some kind of terrifying

revolution either, it seems to me. No one is

working on this, because everyone realizes

that the current government

The political authorities are, in many ways,

based on the fact that they control

the judicial system, and therefore any

legislative initiative, naturally,

will be blocked. That is precisely why it is important for us

to change the political

leadership in power

the Moscow City Duma, the State Duma, and so on. When

United Russia loses its majority

with which it blocks everything under the sun in

the State Duma, then we can

hope that at least some

bills and legislative

initiatives will be considered. It is

elementary: a place should be governed by the people who live in it.

And what should be done? Not long ago, someone wrote to me in

a private message—a justice of the peace

whom I do not know, and from a district very far from me.

She told me that she had recently been

to the Moscow City Court, where she was called in for a dressing-down

because she had liked

the wrong posts on

Facebook. Well then, that kind of dressing-down

that judges are summoned to should be

publicly burned, together with the person who

organized it. Only a free judge

can judge free people; everything

else belongs to those old times.

By the way, you were talking about

juries. Quite rightly so, because

in Tsarist Russia (pre-revolutionary imperial Russia), after all, there was a monarchy

—a monarchy. What more totalitarianism could you want?

And yet there, juries heard all

cases. No,

don’t be shy about saying that they are incapable of understanding the full

complexity of these cases and this evidence.

Good Lord, what is needed from jurors is

life experience, some kind of everyday

practical wisdom, and nowhere has anyone

said or proven that a law professor is

more competent or smarter than some

tailor, shoemaker, turner, locksmith, and so

on. Why don’t you trust us? You know,

the authorities can feel that times

are changing. It is very subtle, judging by

Moscow’s prisons—they are

being renovated. That is, they are being renovated

in some way. So, do you think they are

preparing them for themselves? Well, I think they have come to an understanding

that adversarial process in

the courts begins with competition in

politics. But still, if our

society somehow manages to achieve

real political competition, then what

should be done? Suppose Alexei becomes

the head of our capital. Then what

can a person who genuinely wants to

change this system actually

do, given that

the system is what it is? It

constantly reproduces itself; people

cannot be replaced all at once. So where is

the link that needs to be pulled? Well, one simply needs

to look at the real

powers. What we were saying about

the system of justices of the peace is entirely within

the relevant authority. A law could be passed tomorrow, and

tomorrow one could begin introducing elections for

justices of the peace. And that is very important, because

an ordinary person living an ordinary

life has 90% of their contact with the judicial

system limited to the system of

justices of the peace. Why would such a person go to court?

Their rights were violated, there is a divorce,

division of property, and so on—these are all

matters for justices of the peace. And so I think that

the very first move in this direction—

electing justices of the peace in Moscow—would

be nothing short of a tremendous revolution

in the judicial system as a whole, which would then, of course,

interact with

federal judges on the basis of those

powers that, as you say,

fall under its jurisdiction. That is much more

compli

cated, but nevertheless we need to move in this

direction. We simply need to understand that there is no

single magic key that

you can just pull out of Koschei’s egg (a reference to the villain Koschei the Deathless in Russian folklore), and then everything

will suddenly make us all happy. It will not happen. It is hard,

long

systematic, persistent work that

must, on top of everything else, also be highly

professional. We need to learn to outplay them on a

professional

field as well—not only on the political one, but also on the

professional one. There has to be a fusion

of both. None of this is simple at all.

For example, when I look at the judges of

the Basmanny District Court (a Moscow court often associated with politically charged cases), I wonder how they are not

afraid to hand down these obviously

unlawful decisions. Is there really nowhere inside them

any doubt that in three

years they could all be imprisoned for this, for

so plainly

violating the law? Alexei, many of them sincerely

believe that they are doing the right and

useful work.

Many of them are genuinely convinced that

this is how it should be: on that side are

outsiders, on this side are our own people, and on this

side there is always the prosecutor. This shows up even in

small things. Do you think they are not

afraid that the outsiders in their system, the system of

coordinates, so to speak, will sooner or later take

power? It seems they, too, have

some people behind them, and then things will go badly for them.

Perhaps something like that exists somewhere on a subconscious level,

perhaps not. But you see, again,

in order to fear something in a meaningful

way, one must possess

certain knowledge—for example, historical knowledge.

I am very often asked at meetings,

All right, suppose they elect you mayor. But you

You understand, the Investigative Committee is against you.

So what are you going to do about it,

with the Investigative Committee? What are you going to

do with the prosecutor's office and so

on? What should the strategy of

interaction between the mayor and the

repressive machine of the law enforcement

agencies that exists right

now be? First of all, of course, don't

set yourself up—that is, calculate the risks.

And for that, once again, you need a professional

team. Yes, any decision must not be

vulnerable, at least by formal criteria. Yes,

it's clear that subjectivity is another

matter, but there must be a legal basis behind

everything any manager decides, especially

such a major official as the mayor

of Moscow. And

second, public authority must be

clear and transparent. In office, among other things,

don't lie, don't steal—don't lie and don't

steal. Unfortunately, there is no miracle

mechanism here either that would

fix this. Yes, but again, what is needed is a court. When the court is the kind

with a capital C, the one that says, "Your

Honor," and that truly is a

court, then the situation becomes

different. We keep entering a certain cycle

that at some point needs to be

broken, and whoever takes that on takes

on major risks, of course. It should

be understood. It's like the Kirovles case (a well-known Russian criminal case against opposition figure Alexei Navalny): three

times it was closed, yes, by professionals, but then

came

Bastrykin (Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia's Investigative Committee). You can't do without idealism all the same.

I also agree with my colleagues that

there are a great many people in this world working within

the system who absolutely hate these

informal arrangements and would like

to live by the principle that it is better to serve

than to be servile. So you have to go to

the security service officers, yes, to

investigators, to prosecutors, and say: Guys,

friends, let's live in a normal country

where each of you will serve, not

make money. There are many people

who still go into this line of work, broadly speaking,

guided by values, and even

statistics show that under the age of 24 there are almost

no investigators or

law enforcement officers who

get involved in corruption schemes, because

the system breaks them later. But for now

they came in as normal people. Those are the people

you need to appeal to. And again, about money:

you understand, yes, some make money—but not all.

Many stay because

they think they won't find another job

and they think this job is

privileged. Many come there,

you know, probably for some kind of

thrill, while others come and say

to themselves: if not me, then who? You understand? And what—

you left? No, I left. I left for health

reasons. I had simply gone three years without

a vacation, and I just

ran out of strength. Well, I left because

I understood that I did not want to serve this

system. I was a small person,

a tiny cog, but I did everything

I could. I wasn't afraid; I defended my

point of view everywhere. You know, when lawyers came to you

with motions on, on...

whatever the issue was—lawyers came to me very rarely

with motions, because I

did everything necessary to

actually find the truth, rather than

rubber-stamp things, as often happens now,

generally speaking. You know, dear colleagues, since

we've started recalling personal experience, yes,

please don't take this as immodesty—just

as an example from very recent court

practice, specifically in the Basmanny District Court (a Moscow court often associated with politically sensitive cases), the issue

of a pretrial restraint measure was being considered in

relation to my client—the Bolotnaya case (the prosecution of participants in the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protests).

I was speaking, naturally, with

objections. Opposite me sat an

investigator with the rank of major, who had just

received it while working on the Bolotnaya case. I

finished my statement and sat down; he, at this

small table, with us facing each other,

whispered to me: 'Dmitry Vladimirovich, brilliant

speech—couldn't agree more.'

'But you understand,' this newly minted major

said back to me. I want to say

that I too was an investigator,

the head of an investigative body. This

was in the bad Brezhnev years, then in the

not very clear-cut perestroika years.

I also knew how to do what you described, and

I did it. Now the stock answer is: 'Well, you

understand'—meaning, how investigative teams are formed

for commissioned cases and

why they are formed that way: they gather from all

over the country lieutenants and senior

lieutenants and train them on these

cases, and from a very young

age they come to understand what is really

needed to be a 'good' investigator

today. Then they disperse

after finishing, while some remain

as employees of the central office and

build careers. That's how it is in my cases,

for example. And everyone sees all this; it is very

wrong. But I do agree on one thing: these

young guys absolutely need to be shown an

alternative. Misha, why did you leave

investigative work? I know you're one of our idealists.

Well, 'idealist' is a bit much. It just didn't work out for

me somehow with the investigative authorities. In

principle, the only thing I can add

at this point is that it started

about three, maybe four years ago: all the people,

especially the young ones, who knew how to ask

questions like, 'Why do we have to do it this way, and this

way?'—on the 'valuable instructions' of various

supervisors, they were pushed out, and

they were gradually forced out bit by bit...

Promising cases got buried under piles of other cases from

In my professional experience, I’ve seen two such

striking moments when officers from the

criminal investigation unit would burst in, kicking the door open, to see a

judge who was already getting ready to go home. His

workday was over, and they would shove

a handcuffed person in there. In handcuffs. And

they would say, “We’re out here putting criminals behind bars,”

“and you’re getting ready to go home? Sit down and

judge this one.”

That moment—with all the younger

staff I speak with from time to time—the thought

got stuck in my head: what a complicated thing the criminal procedure system is

in general. It’s an extremely complicated thing, and we work

as best we can. But we do work. So in the end

we get what we get.

You know, still, on the subject of

interaction between an elected mayor and the

Investigative Committee and other agencies,

yes, it seems to me I’d still like it to happen in

a different way, so that he

would interact differently, and so that the elected mayor, as a result of

public audits and oversight of

the work of all government bodies in the city of

Moscow, would in fact

forward materials whenever

any violations are discovered,

sending the relevant materials to

the appropriate authorities, and that this

be done publicly and openly. But tell me,

are there any Moscow-specific

bonuses for Moscow special forces, or

does that not apply? What about Moscow judges?

Well, Moscow bonuses do exist for

Moscow investigators and police officers

—though as far as I know, they were removed in Moscow.

No, there are no Moscow bonuses now,

as far as I know. More likely, this is regulated

primarily through housing issues

and various things connected

with infrastructure. Then again,

the chief judge needs parking,

the kind people complain about—he wants

to park, he needs parking here, he

needs parking there. He needs to solve

some problem with the boiler room, something

happened with utilities and court maintenance, because here

the chief judge is simultaneously

the court’s director, its facilities manager, and everything

else under the sun. So through these everyday

things—apartments, pipes, and parking—they can

squeeze people. And this system

has been refined very well. There are veterans’

organizations that are used to funnel support through, yes,

I agree, through veterans’ organizations, and

there are businesses that are told, “Guys,

you need to help,” and they bring things—not, not directly into

offices. They give to those who know whom

to give it to, because later

the veterans’ organizations end up looking very

good, because they “find” money

for apartments, for victims, and so on.

This

system of bribery has existed for a very long time.

That’s it.

I know less about the

systems we’re talking about today, but

I do know that to get into

the Higher School of the KGB (the Soviet/Russian state security service), yes, for insiders it was $25,000

—and the border guard academy belonged to the same

system too, just a bit less. So tell me,

this person who today

paid $25,000—is he capable of

being

a noble fighter for the interests

of his own people? For insiders, maybe—but outsiders?

Outsiders, no.

He has only one thought in his head:

an investment has been made. What return,

what percentage will there be? He has to make that money back. The mayor needs to push the idea of a municipal

The idea of a municipal

police force needs to be raised. Exactly.

Precisely a municipal police force—right now

yes, yes, in its current form the police

are impossible under federal law, but we

talk about this in our platform. More than that,

we propose what may be, for some, a rather

unusual way

of partly solving the problem, but one we

believe in: hiring private security

companies. That doesn’t necessarily mean those

awful private security outfits we know today,

but the Moscow mayor’s office can absolutely

hire simple patrol personnel like that

—outsourcing, outsourcing. I’m afraid that by its very

nature the system will

reject cooperation, because

here are literally two examples. We started talking about cameras

just now. We had an idea here:

let’s discuss this—

there are cameras everywhere, practically speaking, so

why not use crowdsourcing? Put

pensioners on it, for example, bring them in

through the internet—maybe that’s what’s needed.

Pensioners, fine, whatever—but they tried it

at least. But we understand

what these cameras are like. So there’s a stream

of information coming in, but no one is actually

monitoring it anyway. There was a scandal that

half of them were dummies, and half didn’t

transmit footage at the required resolution,

yet billions of rubles were spent. At the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

we worked on this a lot,

and that’s why they don’t allow

public oversight of the cameras, because

the cameras show nothing. The mayor’s office

must—the mayor’s office must defend the rights

of Muscovites, and if the mayor’s office understands that

there are grounds to believe that this particular prefect (district administrator)

—and the mayor’s office sees from the documents and believes that he

stole 100 million rubles from the housing and utilities system (about 100 million RUB),

then it must insist on

exercising its rights as the injured party.

That’s all. I’m not saying that as mayor I would

call a judge and shout, “Come on, lock up this

good-for-nothing deputy prefect.” No—the mayor’s office simply

hires a proper lawyer itself,

an attorney, and says: please defend our rights.”

the victim's... Go ahead, introduce yourselves, friends.

Thank you very much. Our time

is coming to an end. I am very grateful that you

came. I am very grateful for those valuable

comments regarding the personnel system

for selecting judges, regarding those possible

reforms that can be implemented. Our program

is a living thing, and we would like

it to keep improving and evolving,

to get better, and we need criticism, we

need feedback. We will definitely take all of it

and integrate it in order

to try together to build a society

that is better, including in terms of judicial

reform of the court system

and the law enforcement system. Thank you

very much. Hooray! Thank you very much.

Thanks, everyone. Uh... L.