Alexei Navalny – the One-Man Wikileaks

France24 has a great interview and translation from lawyer, shareholder activist, and blogger Alexei Navalny:

Other Transneft minority shareholders and I were trying to find out what made the construction so expensive when we discovered a truly astonishing document. I’d like to stress that the document was issued by Transneft itself. It’s not an outside analysis or my own guesswork; it’s an official report that was ordered by the Russian Accounts Chamber, signed by Transneft’s first vice-president. We obtained it from an inside source: both Transneft and the Russian Account Chamber have hundreds of employees, and not all of them are corrupt, of course.

The 150-page document describes in detail how huge amounts of moneywere embezzled during the pipeline construction. It explains that allthe subcontractors were actually fake companies, paid exclusively sothey would transfer 25-30% of what they received onto offshore bankaccounts in faraway fiscal paradises. Basically Transneft managers wereusing these companies to steal money.

What do you think happened after we made these documents public?Instead of being prosecuted, the then-CEO of Transneft, SemionVainshtok, was transferred to another company, Olimpstroy, the statecorporation that is building infrastructure for the 2014 Olympics. Therewere no investigations opened, neither by the police nor the Russianaccounts chamber.

 

My main principle is to publish only the information I can verify.If an anonymous source were to send me secret military documents I mostlikely wouldn’t publish them because I have no way to check them, andthey could very well be a set up. 95% of the time, however, theinformation we “uncover” is actually not classified. You can find veryinteresting details by analysing open information sources.”