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Bugs and a video camera were found in Navalny's office

On August 6, in the office of Alexei Navalny, in the premises of the Anti-Corruption Foundation he created, a “bug” and a hidden camera built into the door frame were found. The oppositionist did not play anti-spy, dictating disinformation into the microphone (as he was advised to do on Twitter), but honestly spoke about the discovery, first to his readers, and then to the police. It is still unknown who installed the device and when, although Navalny has already jokingly called this person the owner of the “Czech agent Bastrykin.”

RosPil lawyer Andrei Mishchenkov suggested looking for bugs in the office, who took from a friend a cheap high-frequency detector (the principle diagram of its operation was revealed on dirty). Navalny claims that in his office the device “was bursting with squeaks” and “for fun” it was decided to move the cabinet and look under the baseboard to which the device pointed.

There was a black box attached to the baseboard, from which three wires ran into the wall. The oppositionists called the police and experts. The latter established that the device is a functioning “bug” with two microphones, a radio transmitter and a power supply. They also found a hidden camera in the doorframe of Navalny’s office , filming through a small puncture in the panel.

The police interviewed employees of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, took their fingerprints and, prohibiting video recording of the process, seized the discovered devices. Law enforcement agencies will hand them over to experts, after which “a procedural decision will be made.” In the meantime, one can only guess about the nature and purposes of the spy equipment found, based on published photographs.

Hidden camera found in Navalny's office. Still from a YouTube video

Two information security experts interviewed by Lenta.ru categorically refused to mention their names and places of work. Based on the photographs posted by Navalny and his associates, they unanimously stated that the devices are almost certainly means of collecting acoustic information (that is, those same “bugs”). This is indicated by both the hole in the microphone body and the three wires that traditionally come out of such devices: two are intended for power, and the third is for transmitting information.

At the same time, one expert noted that the microphone body looks too large; today there are significantly smaller models. He suggested that the device (which, according to him, can be found on the open market for several hundred rubles) simply “came into the hands” of those who decided to eavesdrop on what Navalny was saying. Or the special services, if it really was them, decided in this way to divert suspicion from themselves. The second specialist noted that the device was made at a good amateur or laboratory level.

The large size of the devices found in Navalny’s office was also pointed out (also anonymously) by experts interviewed by Moskovsky Komsomolets. The publication's interlocutor directly calls the bugs "poor equipment" and a "mastodon", explaining this by the fact that such devices are no longer used by professionals. Both experts said that if the wiretapping had been organized by the Investigative Committee, Navalny would never have discovered it, especially with his cheap detector.

The same opinion was expressed by one of Lenta.ru’s interlocutors: the intelligence services (if it really is them) will continue to listen, only with more advanced means. True, he noted, such activities are often carried out not only by the state or competitors, but also by counterparties who want to make sure of the reliability of their partner.

But here we should not forget about the strange coincidences that accompany the actions of the Investigative Committee in relation to Navalny. from the oppositionist’s apartment On June 11, his computers were seized , and two weeks later was hacked his microblog . From June 11 to 13, the Investigative Committee also searched the RosPila office, where bugs were now found.

The story with the bugs discovered on Navalny (after the police left, was found another one in the window) and the video camera so far, logically, raises more questions than answers: who installed it? how did he manage to get into the office and install the equipment? Why did they install such old stuff? and why, finally, did Navalny not bother to check the premises earlier? However, the oppositionist has already given a very vague answer to the last question .

It is unlikely that anyone expects that the police will eventually find at the other end of the line Alexander Bastrykin , with whom the oppositionist has a conflict , or an agent of any law enforcement agency. So the head of the human rights association "Agora" Pavel Chikov recalled a similar incident that occurred in his office three years ago. That case, he noted, is awaiting its turn in the European Court of Human Rights.

Sultan Suleimanov

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