In the opposition

A blow to what is not

July 19, 2013 Maxim Blan

The Leninsky District Court of Kirov recognized Alexei Navalny and Pyotr Officerov guilty of embezzlement of the property of the Kirovles State Unitary Enterprise in the amount of 16 million rubles, calling Navalny by the organizer of the crime, and sentenced him to 5 years in prison in the colony of general regime, and Peter Officerov to 4 years. If the Kirov Regional Court does not satisfy the cassation appeal, which the defense has 10 days, and the sentence will enter into force, the most popular opposition politician will be deprived of the opportunity not only to take part in the elections of the Moscow mayor, but will not be able to be elected anywhere until the end of his life, since the crime in which the court found him guilty is especially serious.

After the verdict was announced, the Russian stock market began the day with growth, the Russian stock market crashed: in less than two hours the RTS index lost more than 2%.

By evening, thousands of people took to the streets in the center of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Due to the closure of Manezhnaya Square in Moscow, everyone who wanted to express their attitude to the sentence hardly fit at the intersections of Tverskaya Street, Mokhova and Okhotnaya, but, despite this, the peaceful non-violent action continued until late at night. OMON, police and internal troops opposed the demonstrators, who received dozens of irrigation machines that were not put into affairs. The number of detainees exceeded a hundred, and the action, despite the “dead political season”, became the most numerous unauthorized demonstration after the “walk with writers”.

The fact that the case of Kirovles was politically motivated, and the verdict will be sentenced without taking into account the evidence that the court presented the defense and accusation, from the very beginning no one had any doubts. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurial and expert community was shocked by the fact that Navalny and the officers were convicted only because the forest was sold more than bought, but not even the profit from this operation was named for the damage, but gross revenue. Based on this approach, it is already possible to plant any entrepreneur now, which makes business in Russia extremely dangerous, and entrepreneurial activity to determine the criminal. And since Navalny and Officer are not at all included in the narrow circle of domestic oligarchs, the Kirovles case strikes a crushing blow to small and medium -sized businesses. This is the general leitmotif of the comments that followed the announcement of the sentence. In particular, Mikhail Prokhorov writes in his blog: “... the sentence to Alexei Navalny and Peter Officer is not just a sentence of the entire Russian judicial system. Open, and rather - a whole page in the history of Russian entrepreneurship is closed. From now on, every person concluding an economic contract with someone will know firmly: if desired, he can be imprisoned for this contract at any time. The sentence of Navalny directly hits the interests of small and medium -sized businesses - the foundations of any developed society. I wonder how many young talented businessmen and lawyers are already now, right at that moment they mentally pack their suitcases? ”

With all my respect for Mikhail Prokhorov and other experts who believe that the verdict in the Kirovles case can radically affect the business climate in Russia, it would be possible to agree with them if it were the first non -legal decision on charges of economic crimes. However, the destruction of the Russian judicial system, the undermining of the institution of property, legal lawlessness in relation to entrepreneurs began almost ten years ago with the first “case of Yukos”, if not earlier - at the time of “equivalent of oligarchs”. The risk of losing everything, including freedom, as a result of the fact that the court will take into account the most ridiculous accusations from an economic point of view, has existed since the announcement of the sentence in the second "case of Khodorkovsky-Lebedev case." The Russian judicial system has already demonstrated itself in all its glory so many times - both in the “DeloPussyriot”, and in the process of posthumous condemnation of Sergei Magnitsky, and in hundreds of other, less “resonant” cases, which entrepreneurs have no illusions for a long time.

The fact that economic activity in the Russian territory is incompatible with political (unless this is the activities of the “faithful Putin”, an activist of “United Russia”) has been firmly learned everything, and for a long time, and the defeat of the near -Moluzhkov economic empire and the raider seizure of the Bank of Moscow clearly demonstrated that the lack of political ambitions also did not give any guarantees. Those who considered the risk at any moment to lose their business and fall under the criminal article unacceptable for a long time to turn off or minimize business activity in Russia, withdrawing assets where they did not give out. The outflow of capital from Russia, which is non -replacement of the last four years, is a visual confirmation of this. And if we say that the “Kirovles case” struck institutes, without which a civilized market economy is not able to function, it must be added that these institutions are already in the ruins, and there is simply nowhere to destroy them.

By the way, the same applies to the institution of elections - the only civilized way of non -violent change of power, without which it is simply ridiculous to talk about political stability in the country. So the verdict of the Leninsky district court Kirov was not so much a blow to the Russian economic and political system as the next, very clear demonstration of its condition.

Photo by EPA / ITAR-TASS / Valentina Svistunova