Responding to Zolotov (preliminarily)

Hello, this is Georgy Alburov, and I'm with you.

Today I'll discuss what you can probably already

guess.

that puffing yourself up and throwing a hood over your own

sense of importance over products made from American

mink fur.

Rotten inside, decayed through and through, you're just

tumbleweeds, just as rotten as ever.

My opposition-minded friends, as you know, I am in

something of a state of

shock from all this even now, because, well,

what even is this? It's: 'Good afternoon,

Mr. Navalny, juice can't cost 40 rubles'

When you were still just

learning to use a potty, I had already served at court—it's unclear...

It's clear that you are a product of American

mink fur; they're all clones, obviously, in every

column, and Navalny, Ukraine, ours—rotten

inside, decayed, rotten you are, and

decayed too, because no one has ever

properly smacked your backside.

A general, a top-ranking official,

the commander-in-chief of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), with the status of

a minister, Putin's personal bodyguard, recorded

a video address to Navalny that makes

even Usmanov's famous

'ptoo on you' and Medvedev's 'compote' pale in comparison, and

really everything we have ever

seen before pales beside it. And all because

no one has ever properly

smacked him on the backside.

Yes, hard enough that he'd feel it in his liver, but

you know, I'm glad. I'm glad this video exists.

I'm glad it's exactly like this, exactly now,

and I'm glad so many people have seen it and

are discussing it. It's better than any notes,

better than any articles and books, anonymous

Telegram channels, and all the rest. Better than anything else,

it shows who exactly runs

today's Russia, how the people

closest to Putin speak and

think, what's in their heads, how they see

the world, how they treat their

fellow citizens, the people at whose expense this whole

bureaucratic machine exists. I won't

say anything about the so-called duel,

or rather the street-style showdown that General

Zolotov

the official is setting up with

Navalny, who is sitting in a special detention facility.

An opponent who not only cannot respond

in the same format, he cannot even

watch this video masterpiece.

In a couple of weeks, when Alexei gets out, I'm

sure he will record his own response.

But today I want to make sure that amid

all these

jokes and memes, we don't lose sight of something very

important—namely, that we did not receive a single

refutation of our investigation,

not even a hint of one. Instead of a

refutation,

we were fed a video of a crazed general

talking about how he would give Navalny

a beating and turn him into a

juicy

cutlet. 'In a few minutes I'll turn you into a juicy'

'cutlet.' That doesn't satisfy us. We at the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK)

are not in the business of itching for fights; we investigate corruption,

that's what we do.

So let's all try together

to extract at least something substantive

from Zolotov's video. I'll very quickly

remind you of the context.

Recently we published a very simple

investigation. Its essence was as follows:

Medvedev issued a secret decree according to which

all food for the entire National Guard across

all of Russia had to be purchased from one

single supplier,

the Crimean meat-processing plant Druzhba Narodov ('Friendship of Peoples').

The investigation really wasn't very

complicated: we take two state contracts for the purchase of

the same food by the same

Rosgvardiya unit, one before the

secret decree and one after it, and

we find that cabbage used to be bought for 15

rubles, and now from Druzhba Narodov it's 47.

Onions cost 16 last year, and now they're

37. How can that be? Very strange. The meat-processing plant

Druzhba Narodov is solely owned by

a former Rosgvardiya employee and

subordinate of Zolotov, a man unknown to

the public, Boris Zaurbekovich

Kantemirov.

Kantemirov is no businessman, no

landowner—just a former head of an archive at the

Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).

Later he worked as a director in companies

that served Medvedev's interests.

That, essentially, is the whole point. For

all the evidence and documents, I

refer you to the post written a month ago;

the link is in the description. So how does Zolotov

respond to this fairly simple and

unambiguous accusation? I suggest you

listen to this excerpt in full, since

it really doesn't take much time—

just 16 seconds. In a 7-minute video,

Zolotov devoted to refuting

our findings this main segment,

in which he says:

'You said, for example, 40 rubles for juice.'

'That only goes to show that these are, damn it,

dishonest suppliers and corruption

that you have there somewhere, because

juice can't cost 40 rubles. At that price

it can only be water and flavoring.'

Viktor Vasilyevich, let's sort this out.

Here are the requirements for the juice from 2017; it was

purchased for 40 rubles. And here are the requirements for

the new juice in 2018; you are buying it

for 87 rubles.

We compare them: the GOST standard is the same, the number

of the technical regulation is also the same,

the packaging, shelf life, and even the requirements

for the technological opening for

the straw are exactly identical.

the price differs by more than two times if

juice cannot possibly cost 40 rubles, so that

sorry, what exactly have you been buying all this time

for your men? Look here at the acceptance certificate

for the goods, a document from the Gosuslugi website (Russia's government services portal)

this confirms that that very same juice

which Zolotov calls a surrogate and

water, did not raise the slightest

suspicions even 10 months ago. The date

on the certificate is November 2017, quite recently

I emphasize, we are not talking about the wild 1990s. Let's examine

the document carefully: at the top, the signature

of a colonel, the head of the center

for logistics and material support

of the National Guard of Russia (Rosgvardiya)

at the end there are more weighty signatures: another

colonel, the head of the commission

and then three different lieutenant colonels, all of whom

certify it. Besides them, the warehouse manager and

the accountant as well. What is this, some kind of criminals in uniform?

Viktor Vasilyevich,

so it turns out that your subordinates—2

colonels, 3 lieutenant colonels,

and two more employees—entered into a criminal

conspiracy and accepted 17 tons of surrogate product

tell us, when will the trial of this

group finally take place? But Zolotov says no more about it

there are no invoices. I would be glad to keep

refuting and refuting you, but what about the fact that

there are onions at 37 rubles, and meat that

has become worse in quality but at the same time

has gone up in price by one and a half times

and

why is it that I open Rosstat statistics (Russia's federal statistics agency)

and see that white cabbage in June

2017 in stores in Stavropol Krai (a region in southern Russia)

was being sold for 27 rubles per kilogram, while

the National Guard there, and even wholesale,

was buying it for 47. What are those extra 20

rubles for? Rosgvardiya is paying them even without all

these duels and talk of satisfaction, the situation

is absurd, and an official has been accused of

a large-scale and absolutely shameless

corruption scheme

a very officer-like one, supposedly. But instead of

refuting it, instead of

telling us who the real owner is

of the plant

how he came to own this asset, how it

turned out that he is connected to Zolotov and

Medvedev, and why contracts are distributed by secret decrees

instead, we are being told

about Berezovsky, Poroshenko,

Marbella, and American test tubes. No,

what are you talking about, some product of American nonsense?

We provided all the calculations, comparisons,

and evidence. And what counterarguments do I get?

Nonsense and threats of physical violence. Many

were saying on Tuesday, well, this is

a good sign, the birth of a political

discussion, the authorities have thus recognized

Navalny, and so on. But I sit here and

think: what the hell kind of political discussion is this?

Debates are political discussion

discussion on talk shows, in the pages of newspapers—

that is discussion

but here, excuse me, this is just a semi-bandit

intimidation attempt, with the appropriate language and

threats, because no one has ever properly

smacked them down

hard enough for them to really feel it in their gut

where he promises that in a few minutes

he will turn you into mincemeat, into a chop, and

this open threat comes from a man

who not only formally possesses

enormous power, but also literally has an army

under his command, and is also known for his

less official ties and

connections

it is important to keep this in mind and not forget that

soon this video address by Zolotov

will become tiresome and stop being

funny, but ordinary employees and servicemen

of Rosgvardiya will continue to be robbed just as they have been

We at the Anti-Corruption Foundation

will do everything we can to make sure this

story is not buried

and not swept under the rug. You can help us

with this if you know anything about

corruption in Rosgvardiya

or procurement fraud, or any other

schemes of this kind

write to us anonymously through the black box for

Corruption is not fought like street thugs behind garages

and corruption is not defeated in duels either

the main enemy of corruption is

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