A Response to Alisher Usmanov

Well then, my dear viewers, the time has come.

You have all, of course, seen how the furious

Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov recorded, over

the past few days, no fewer than two video addresses to

me, explaining what an

honest, principled, and decent

person he is. He rejects all of our

accusations. He did not pay bribes to Medvedev

and other officials. He did not take part in

privatization. He pays taxes in Russia.

He has no real criminal

past. All the cases against him were

fabricated. He is practically a dissident.

He is outraged. He has sued me. And

Alisher Usmanov, no worse than a seasoned

rapper on Versus (a Russian rap battle platform), mocks me and

says: "So why aren’t you responding to

my addresses, Alexei? You have nothing

to say. I’m right, and you’re not." When your

lies are refuted with documents in hand,

you start, it seems to me, to lose your nerve. Dear

Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov, I am entirely at

your service. And this video, based

exclusively on documents, each of which

we attach in the description to this

video, will from now on be your official

biography, unlike the lies

that you offer to a gullible

public. And I strongly recommend that everyone

watch this video to the end, because

this is an important story about how

Russia works, how oligarchy works, and how

the bureaucracy works. But first I have

a few words about the form of your addresses

to me. I think it is time to call you

what you really are. I want

to remind you that in the country where I live,

and it is called Russia, it is customary

to address strangers formally, and certainly not

to record a video address in

such a specifically boorish manner. I

understand perfectly well why you did this.

You want to show, well, not even me, but

everyone around you, that you are a master of life and

can speak in this manner to

anyone who has doubted

that you amassed your capital by honest

means. You yourself are used to groveling

before those above you. And to those people

you deliver billion-ruble bribes,

as was the case with Medvedev. But as for everyone

else, you think they can either

be bought or intimidated? That will not work with me.

I am not afraid of you and your

official friends. To me, you are an ordinary

crook, and one who is also trying, through your dispute

with me, to serve the corrupt official

Medvedev so that everyone forgets about him and

discusses only this video dialogue

between Navalny and Usmanov. But I will have this

video dialogue; it is no trouble for me. Where is the money,

Libovskie?

Many people noticed that you

carefully avoid the question of where

you got your first big money. And

where did your first money come from? And in general, where is

the first million? That was the question.

[music]

Not everyone—everyone was stealing, so Usmanov

must have been stealing too. And once again I understand why.

Because you are lying in your official

version. It goes like this: "You produced

plastic bags, then traded

cigarettes, then went bankrupt, and then

founded the company Interfin," into which

your partners invested $10 million each

because they believed in your genius

business abilities. We dug up

the documents. Documents. The company Interfin

really did exist from 1995.

But you forget

to tell us that from the moment of

its founding, 40% of Interfin belonged

to the British firm

Middlesex Holdings. And what do people at the Anti-Corruption Foundation do

when they see a company

registered in the United Kingdom?

That’s right—they rejoice, because

British companies must file extremely detailed reports

every year. There you find

both financials and accompanying

comments on how things are going. Alisher

Burkhanovich: "We were not too lazy and

read all the reports of this company and

others connected to it over 20 years. That is

more than 2,000 pages. We are publishing these

reports, and anyone, anyone can

read them and verify our words. We

spent a huge amount of time, but we do not regret

it, because this is a real treasure trove.

It is the real history of the privatization of Soviet

assets, meticulously recorded

by the British. So now, about your

little schemes, we could write a whole book. From the

documents we see that on October 15,

1993, you acquired

a shareholding in the British Middle. And in

1996, through this company, you pulled

the following stunt. The British

company buys the offshore company DRI,

registered on an island. It

holds exclusive rights to

export and sell the products of the Oskol

Electrometallurgical Plant. These are

direct reduced iron products.

And the Oskol plant itself is a

giant Soviet enterprise. It

was even once named after Brezhnev. And

here the question arises: why on earth

in 1996 would a

Russian raw materials enterprise sell

its products abroad through a

front offshore company, and moreover

on an exclusive basis? And everything becomes

clear when we see that the owner

of this offshore company was you, dear Alisher

Burkhanovich. You registered an offshore company for yourself,

and then, I do not even know how,

using threats, bribes, and payoffs, secured

a ten-year export contract

for the products of Soviet raw-materials

enterprises, and then literally the very

next day sold that company to your

British partners, with whom you were

in business together. That was the start of your major

business. And no matter how outraged you are by the fact

that I say you made your fortune from

trading raw materials, that is the plain truth. Since

the mid-1990s, the British company Middlesex,

in which you held a stake, was selling

Russian raw materials to the world. And that is precisely your

first capital. And after that, as they

say, things really took off. You brought such a

fat prize to your partners that they

appointed you vice president

of Middlesex. And the company began not only

to trade in the products of Soviet

enterprises, but also gradually to buy them up.

The acquisitions were carried out simultaneously by the British

company where you were a partner, and your

Russian company Interfin. And in

1997, you pulled off

the main corruption scheme of your life.

While continuing to run your own business, you also went

to work for Gazprom, in its subsidiary

Gazprom Investholding. At

Gazprom, you were also responsible for buying up

shares in mining and processing plants.

Shall I remind you, our dear Alisher

Burkhanovich Usmanov, from whom exactly you

were buying these shares for Gazprom and with

Gazprom’s money? From your dear self. In 2002,

under your leadership, Gazprom

Investholding created a subsidiary

on the British Virgin

Islands, which then bought the Russian

business in your company Middlesex for $23

million. This is a direct conflict

of interest, this is outright corruption. For this

alone, you should be in prison. But

that did not happen, unfortunately. And you

continued buying up shares

in mining and processing plants on the market

with Gazprom’s money. And all these stakes

were consolidated into the company Gazmetall.

Gradually, it came to own 80%

of the huge Lebedinsky GOK (mining and processing plant) and 70%

of the Oskol plant. And then suddenly

Gazprom decided that metallurgical

assets were of no use to it at all. Very

strange. It had only just recently

been buying stakes from the British. It was buying

stakes on the market, and then suddenly decided that

it needed none of it. And guess to whom

Gazprom suddenly sold the metallurgical assets it had

gone off. To you, Alisher

Burkhanovich, and your partners.

Gazprom’s 48% stake in

Gazmetall was sold without a tender, without

an auction, to your company Interfin for $72

million. Calculated per share,

that was cheaper than what you paid for these shares from

your own British company. This, by the way,

is privatization: when you strip assets from

a state-owned company

and you took part in it,

no matter how hard you try

to prove otherwise. You are lying when you say that

the source of my wealth was the largest

privatization deal. You are lying

when you say that I took, stole

Soviet mining and processing plants.

The loans-for-shares auctions, as I recall,

ended in 1995, for

your information. I never took part in any

of them. Nor in any subsequent

privatization deals either. For those

who are confused, I’ll explain it very simply.

Usmanov—let’s say it was Usmanov. He

got himself into Gazprom, then with Gazprom’s

money bought his own shares, and then

a short while later sold them back to

himself, only more cheaply. So, roughly

speaking, he simply robbed Gazprom.

A textbook example of corruption. You,

Alisher Burkhanovich, were asked many times back then:

“Doesn’t this deal look at least a little

suspicious? One

man is selling to himself.” But you lied,

saying that since your appointment to Gazprom you

had no connection to the company Interfin.

But we can see from the documents that all this

time you were working in the British and

parent company of Interfin. There you

were vice president from 1997

and a shareholder from 1993.

And now for the most

interesting part: right now all of you, my viewers,

well, except Usmanov, are probably wondering,

how did Usmanov manage

to rob Gazprom and no one even said a

word? It’s very simple. Do you know who

was chairman of Gazprom’s

board of directors at that moment? Maybe you’ve

already guessed, and if not, then

please welcome

Dmitry Anatolyevich

Medvedev. Together with him, you cooked up this

scheme. Together with him, you robbed Gazprom.

And for many years you brought him bribes

precisely in exchange for the fact that back then, with

Gazprom’s money, you, Alisher Usmanov,

created your own metallurgical company.

And would you like me to show you another witness?

The floor goes to a man who was extremely

influential in that period, the founder

of the United Russia party and one of the

political fathers of President Putin.

Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, please tell

us what happened there. The names

of those at the top of the Russian

government, in particular Putin and Medvedev.

Medvedev as well,

yes. In connection with the lawsuit involving Kanisimov, concerning

my, my, my shares in Metalloinvest,

Medvedev was also, uh, mentioned as one of

one of those who made the decisions, who at the level of

the authorities, uh, helped create the, uh, company

which was originally, uh, called

I think, for the purchase and acquisition of

the Mikhailovsky GOK (mining and processing plant), and on the basis of which

the company Metalloinvest later emerged. And

this was created precisely at the time

when Medvedev was head of the

presidential administration, and Mr.

Usmanov was lobbying through Medvedev for

the creation of this company. And the mansion on

Rublyovka (an elite residential area outside Moscow), worth 5 billion rubles, was a bribe

to Medvedev. I insist on that. And

no matter how much you lie, no matter how many

tall tales you tell us about

a property swap, and this whole story with

the land and the house is a huge,

long-running,

multi-stage, so to speak, saga in

which there were three interested

parties. And I had to pay not for

the deal to happen, but to make sure it

did not happen between them. And each one had to be

paid: one with assets, so that he would

give up the profit he wanted to

make on his money. Another with loans and

cash so that he would give up the land. And

in the end, everyone got what

they wanted. The only document that

exists in this whole discussion is

an official certificate from Rosreestr (Russia's state real estate registry) stating

that you personally donated this mansion.

You donated it to a foundation controlled by

Medvedev. Everything else is just

words, and the only document

supports our

position. Now, taxes. Because about

Usmanov, the honest taxpayer, we have

heard a lot. And over 10 years he

paid almost half a billion dollars,

converted at the exchange rate. Half a billion

dollars over 10 years. Seriously? Do you

think we are supposed to believe that this is

a substantial amount? Yes, you should have

paid several times more. And I will

prove it right now. And you, dear

viewers—though again, except for Alisher

Burkhanovich—please listen

carefully, because this is

the main scheme. Why is it that in Russia, such a

rich country, the population is so poor?

Why do we earn nothing from

our own raw materials, while only people like

Usmanov get rich from them? After all, this

scheme is typical of any Russian

commodities oligarch. Look. So here he is,

having grabbed hold of mining and processing plants.

They produce raw materials. The raw materials go abroad,

and it should be a simple chain: supplier,

customer. You extract it in Russia, sell it at

market price, pay taxes,

pay wages, pay export

duties. That's how it should work. And

that's how it will work when I become

president. But for Usmanov, it works

differently. Enterprising Alisher Burkhanovich

does not sell directly, but through his own

intermediaries. According to UK

reporting, we can see that since the mid-

1990s, the lion's share of exports from both

Lebedinsky GOK and the Oskol

plant has been sold through intermediary

companies controlled by Usmanov and his

partners. In the 1990s these were

Swiss and British companies. And from the

moment Alisher Burkhanovich grabbed

a stake in Gazprom, the exports were routed through

Gibraltar and Irish offshore companies. So

for example, if we take specifically

the year 2006, Lebedinsky GOK produces

iron ore pellets, a kind of

processed ore concentrate. It sells

them to its own outfits, the Gibraltar and

Irish intermediaries, for $40

per ton. And the intermediary then sells them at market

price all over the world: to countries in

Eastern Europe, to Turkey, to Asia, and

everywhere else. But by that time the market price

was, by the most conservative estimate, around

$100. In other words, the difference was more than

double. Thanks to this, well, very

simple scheme, the Russian profits of

Lebedinsky GOK and the Oskol

plant were understated every year.

Accordingly, taxes were understated as well, and

so were the export duties going into the budget. Meanwhile,

all the costs were, naturally, in

Russia: open pits, production, wages,

while the profit settled in a Gibraltar

offshore company. This tax avoidance scheme

is called transfer pricing.

I am sure many people remember this term well

at least from the

news. After all, formally, this is exactly what

Khodorkovsky was sentenced for in 2003—to 10

years. Now consider the scale. From

the customs statistics, again, the documents show

that in 2006 alone, to

Usmanov's intermediary offshore company there were

raw materials sold worth more than $700 million.

By a conservative estimate,

reselling them to the actual buyers

would bring in twice as much. There they are, those

hundreds of millions of dollars not paid

into the Russian budget. Don't believe the

customs database? Well then, Alisher Burkhanovich,

here is a document sent out by one of your

companies to investors on the

London Stock Exchange in 2008. It mentions your

Gibraltar company, discloses

that it belongs personally to Usmanov, and also

states its annual turnover: $3 billion

US. The Gibraltar offshore company sold

$3 billion worth of Russian raw materials,

diverting them from taxation in Russia. And

this scheme operated continuously. So

these are exactly the funds that

elevate you. Alisher Burkhanovich, in

to fifth place on the Forbes list. With a fortune of

$15.2 billion. And for that, you should be

sitting in prison, but instead, for some reason, you’re sailing

on a yacht worth $500 million. And

what is especially outrageous, Alisher

Burkhanovich, is that you and the Russian authorities,

Putin and Medvedev, are seriously trying

to convince us that we should be

grateful to you for those $500 million

in taxes left in Russia. Even though at

the same time, you are at the very least looking the other way.

You bought the yacht Dilbar, naming it after

your mother, for $500 million. You bought

the Burkhan jet, naming it after

your father, for $350 million. You

bought shares in the British football club Arsenal

for $150 million. And

you want to buy another $2.3 billion worth of those shares

You bought a mansion in London for

$70 million and a villa in Sardinia for

$150 million, and so on and so

forth. So once again, you make your money

from Russia’s natural resource wealth,

which belongs to all of us. And you cheat and

rob all of us. And on top of that, we’re somehow supposed

to thank you for it, for the fact

that you paid a pittance here.

No, we are not going to thank you.

You must pay as much as

the law requires.

that I have a much deeper connection to the internet

than

you do. I don’t just use it, I develop it. You

develop the internet? Seriously? You do not

develop the internet; you are ruining it for us.

And tens of

millions of users of the largest

Russian social network, VKontakte, know that very well. Because

with your help, the authorities seized VKontakte

from its founder, Pavel Durov. Durov

refused to hand over to the security services the data of

users in groups where people criticized

the authorities, including, by the way,

groups supporting Alexei Navalny. And you

took VKontakte away from Durov and imposed

censorship there. And now, every week, in our country

people are being prosecuted over

likes and reposts. The social network you own

now gladly

turns people in and helps the authorities

fabricate criminal cases. So do not even

dare tell us that you

are developing

the internet. Criminal past and

rape. So, in fact,

listen to the excerpt over which you,

Alisher Burkhanovich, sued me.

My God. Alisher Usmanov is upset that he was

accused of a crime. In the 1990s

he served, I believe, six years in prison

in Uzbekistan. Either for rape

or for fraud. Therefore,

first of all, Alisher Usmanov is, without question,

legally a criminal and was

a criminal. Well, what can I

add to that? In analyzing your biography, I

rely on specific written

sources. The fact that you were imprisoned in

Soviet times for fraud is

an established fact. You yourself do not

deny it. I served six years in prison, unlike you,

The fact that among the

charges there was rape,

is something we are told by the former ambassador

of the United Kingdom to Uzbekistan, Craig

Murray. And as far as I know, you have never personally

sued Ambassador Murray

even once. And right now I am going to

the ambassador’s website and reading there: Alisher Usmanov is

a vicious gangster, a criminal, a racketeer,

a heroin trafficker, and a man accused

of rape. I do not know what happened there

or who raped whom, or did not.

But let’s think, Alisher Burkhanovich,

who are we more likely to believe: you,

an obvious fraudster and liar, or the former

British ambassador, a man who

A, was an official representative; B, simply by virtue of his

position, dealt with the entire leadership

of Uzbekistan; C, had access to all

classified information; and D, still

stands by those statements. Sorry,

but I am more inclined to believe the ambassador. And if he is not

right, then do not sue me in a

Russian court; try winning against

him in a British court. But you do not

do that. And as for the claim that

the case against you in 1980 was

fabricated, and that you proved this in court,

please, do not make us all laugh. Are you

seriously trying to convince us that

you were a political prisoner in the USSR?

If that were true, you probably would have secured

rehabilitation immediately after the collapse

of the Soviet Union. Instead, an Uzbek court

rubber-stamped that ruling in 2000,

when you had already become

a multimillionaire. Well, of course, none of

us doubts your ability

to obtain absolutely any ruling from an Uzbek

court. Because we understand roughly how

Uzbekistan works. And we can see

in this video how you are dancing with the daughter

of the president of Uzbekistan. And all these

worthless pieces of paper mean nothing to us. When

a case was fabricated against me, I

appealed not to an Uzbek court, but to the

European Court of Human Rights, where

you cannot bring a briefcase full of

money, as you usually do. And in that

honest court, I proved that the case

against me was entirely fabricated. And my

sentence was overturned, just as all the other

sentences that this

government hands down against me will be overturned, because I prevent

them and you from stealing.

Let’s move on. We do not have any miners here, but at least

you could have learned even that. We have

open-pit ore mining. We have

miners. You know, Alisher Burkhanovich,

this in particular really infuriated me. You’re

profiting off these people. Well,

at least take a little interest in how they

live, how they work, how your own

companies are run.

There is underground work at your

industrial plants, even despite the fact that

mining there is carried out by open-pit methods. And

there is a mine, and ventilation systems are being installed. Well,

just look, there are job postings up, they’re looking for people

for underground work. Here is the case of the death

of a mine support worker in underground operations.

So of course they do exist. I will repeat once again

that in every position, at your

plants, employees’ wages

are miserably low and in no way correspond

to the hardship and harmful conditions of this work. And don’t

feed us, please, with stories that

you pay so little because that’s just

how the Russian economy works. You simply move

money offshore and save by underpaying wages.

That’s

all. And one last thing. Shame on you. Shame

on you. Once again. In response to this, I can

say only one thing. I wish you good

health, Alisher Burkhanovich. I very much want

everything to be fine with you and for you

to live longer so that when I

become President of Russia, I can send you

to the defendant’s bench together with all

your accomplices, including Dmitry

Medvedev, to whom you paid bribes, including

for the mansion on Rublyovka (an elite suburb of Moscow) worth 5 billion

rubles. It will be a very fair trial, and you

will receive exactly what you deserve

according to your deeds. No more, no

less. And as for the rest of you, my

dear viewers, I suggest you choose,

since the authorities, speaking through Alisher Usmanov,

are trying to prove to us how properly and

fairly everything is arranged in our country, while I

argue with them by describing my vision

of Russia’s future, then please decide

what you like better, what

seems more just to you: the Russia

of Usmanov, Putin, and Medvedev, or a Russia

that belongs to all of us, where

corruption is fought, taxes are paid, and

the nation’s wealth is distributed

fairly. If you support me, then as a first

step, sign in support of my

nomination as a presidential candidate. You

can sign up as a volunteer for our

campaign. You can help me financially.

I’m not an oligarch, and I can’t do this without you. And if

you support Usmanov, well, I don’t even know

what to tell you to do. Just give a like to

his video and keep living in poverty.

Subscribe to our channel. Here

we tell the truth.