"We are the Practical Fatalists"

What is happening in the FBK after the action on March 26, why schoolchildren came to it and, as an elementary security protocol, did not allow the authorities to disrupt the film’s release about Medvedev. The author of the investigation Georgy Alburov answers questions "New"

The office of the Corruption Fund (FBK) is blocked by security forces. 12 people - employees and volunteers of the FBC, as well as members of the Newcaster film crew, who helped the fund by conducting a direct broadcast from rallies throughout Russia, under arrest. Here are their names: Ruslan Ablyakimov, Oksana Baulin, Leonid Volkov, Anton Glembo, Sergey Gorkaev, Ekaterina Melnikova, Konstantin Shirokov, Vladimir Buzin, Ekaterina Kenarev, Alexey Lapyshev, Vladislav Mosin, Anna Retenenko. Aleksey Navalny, detained on Tverskaya (15 days), and Nikolai Lyaskin, arrested on the road from a rally (25 days) are also located in the special cost. It looks like the authorities were beaten in chess, and she took out a mount and took the hostages.

Georgy Alburov, one of the authors of the investigation about yachts and vineyards of the prime minister, was lucky: he was not detained either in the office or at the rally. We are talking on Wednesday evening. “He just participated in the quest,” says Alburov. “He was released from the coarse.”

- What happened in the office of the FBK on March 26?

- From there was a direct broadcast from rallies. About 150 thousand people looked at the peak. At some point, under the pretext of a terrorist threat, the police, Ephesians, tried to break into the office. At first they did not open them, then they nevertheless opened it, and they drew up a protocol for the “police resistance” for everyone in the room. The police claim that she wanted to save those who were in the building, and they did not want to escape. Therefore, they were planted for 7 days. Two people were released for fines. Then investigative actions began in the office. It is argued that Leonid Volkov ( head of the election headquarters of Alexei Navalny. - Ed. ) During a direct broadcast, he allowed himself some extremist statements. Under this pretext, all equipment was seized altogether. Moreover, there was not only the FBK technique, there was the technique of the guys who were broadcasting, it was NewCaster. And if we lost just computers, system units, then these guys lost their equipment, apparently, by millions of rubles, because it was partly, partly their partners, partly rented. But we still cannot conduct an inventory of what we stole: there is still no access to the office. There is an outfit of the police, he says that everything is sealed, although some people go inside, rummage through the tables.

But we are not some kind of commercial organization, in which if you steal all the equipment, then its work will be immediately paralyzed.

Everyone who gets up to work in the FBC understands that the situation when they come to you with a search and take away all the equipment - it is not only likely, it is guaranteed. We are ready for this, we have immunity.

So everyone is doing their own business. Even our video studio was quickly reformatted, releases videos, morning shows.

Changing the office because the Ephesians sat there for a couple of days is stupid. They will easily put a wiretap without it. Well, now, maybe also a “visualization”. If they want to do something, they will do it anyway. We are fatalists-practitioners.

Updated 03/31/2017
FBK employees printed their office after five days of investigative actions. Look here

- How is the work of the FBK so that none of the laws that the State Duma of the past convocation adopted to protect officials from your curiosity worked - neither at the stage of collecting information, nor while working on the film?

-Previously, we had cases when we said something in the office, and literally the very next day or even a few hours later, some decision was made upstairs. Example: found in France the undeclared villa of Turchak, the governor of the Pskov region. Two days pass, this villa appears in his declaration in the middle of the year. Or: We discussed the profiles in social networks of children of some officials. I come home - these profiles are already deleted. Although some accounts were five years old. In just a few hours, the information came from wiretap, that is, from some Ephesians to the authorities, and a decision was already made, there was a reaction.

After that, we introduced a secrecy regime in the office. Well, in fact, these are a few banal rules that allow us to get rid of many problems. It is clear that our entire Internet traffic is visible. Therefore, we use VPN, in especially critical cases we use Tor, and this saves.

As for the wiretap, the recipe is simple: in the office, nothing is superfluous to say. Invent some code names for projects. Medvedev appeared in our country as a "black ruler."

Moreover, if at first it was an irony (after all, this is just Medvedev, what the lover he was), then, when we accumulated information about yachts, vineyards, Tuscan, this code name lost any ironic shade. Actually, everything. To go to the Internet via VPN, to speak less in the office, two -factor authorization, not to use domestic services. This is an elementary security protocol. Apparently, this time he also worked. We did not write complaints before the publication of the case. Then they would receive information and, perhaps, did something. And so I have no doubt that Medvedev and his environment learned about our investigation from the film itself, and not in advance.

- How did you expect the frontman of this project that he would take schoolchildren and students to the streets of schoolchildren?

- Honestly, in the second month of work on history, you lose a sense of objective assessment of the material. That is, you continue to look for connections between companies, but you no longer understand whether people will like it or not. Therefore, the reaction was amazing and unexpected for me. For power too. People in large numbers entered the action, which the authorities called the disagreed.

What can she do? Ban YouTube or plant Navalny. To ban YouTube is too much, and Navalny can be planted for 15 days.

And initiate a couple of criminal cases. Each time the same thing. This is a standard reaction. Only this time she was exacerbated by the actually all -Russian campaign. I can’t remember when the rallies were the last time in 100 cities at the same time. Moreover, with the participation of students who are politically ripe after Bolotnaya and who understand that they live in a country where they have no prospects if they are not children of officials. They understand this, evaluate risks and go to rallies.

Perhaps this happened even due to the fact that we are developing the video management. On YouTube, subscribers are very fast. The film was watched by 15 million people. We never had this.

That Medvedev is a good topic, we understood back in September. When published an investigation about the "Duck House". It was a simple five -minute video with a span over the cottage. But he looked phenomenally a lot of people. Maybe because this is the second person in the country, a former president, on whom many had some timid hopes. We realized that if 4-5 million watched a small story, it is worth making a big story. By the way, it is surprising that 4-5 million is only on YouTube. At some point, I went to the "Odnoklassniki" and drove the Dacha Medvedev. And it turned out that people pumped a video from YouTube and poured on Odnoklassniki. A few another 7 million people watched several upper rollers.

Some characters shoot more, some less. In this case, a blatant luxurious lifestyle was overlapped that we began to make videos better, found an audience. It all coincided together.