Editor of www.vzjatkam.net (No Bribes): “Our goal is to make information about bribe-takers generally accessible”

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One of the latest most remarkable and most talked-of events in the Russian segment of the Internet was the Nov 2 opening of www.vjatkam.net web-site, an anonymous, highly professional and widely accessible project exposing bribery. Shortly after its opening the web-site attracted wide public attention by dozens of reports about people taking bribes worth hundreds of thousands of US dollars. This is the first case of such a big guerilla war against bribery. Starting from Nov 9 the web-site suffered a large-scale DOS attack and on Nov 13 it was forced to stop its work. However, its authors are not going to give up. The editor-in-chief of the web-site has anonymously told a REGNUM correspondent about the tasks and plans of the project.

REGNUM: What made you launch such a project?

Our motive was simple: officials fighting corruption are like people fighting their own selves. This is something unclear, uninteresting and hardly effective. Today, we have total corruption in the country: we all are forced to give bribes.

Our argument was that the best and easiest way to fight corruption is to make the information about bribe-takers widely accessible. Corruption is a shameful crime. Perhaps, some people make no secret of it in their offices, but they would certainly not like their children and friends to know about it.

REGNUM: Traditionally, the names of bribe-takers are made public by the mass media. Then, what is your project for?

The mass media are tied hand and foot by the law. They are forced to write about proved cases only, i.e. the cases qualified by court as bribery; but you may look in our web-site for this year’s statistics and you will see that only each 5^th such case is brought to court. It’s not a secret that “envelopes” and “briefcases” are no longer in use; today, big bribes are transferred to some off-shore dummy companies. So, exactly because we are not a mass media, each person who was forced to give a bribe can tell about it in our site – something they can’t do via the mass media. On the other hand, unlike reports in the mass media, our reports cannot be considered as information about crime under articles 144-145 of the Code of Criminal Proceedings.

REGNUM: Aren’t you afraid of being charged with slander?

Since we are not a mass media, we can’t be prosecuted for slander under article 129 of the Criminal Code. This may be a problem for our informants only. Naturally, we know that some of them may act contrary to article 129; but we can’t check up all the information we receive even though we pre-moderate our site and cast away all dubious and openly slanderous information.

Of almost 500 reports we have received so far, we have published 300; the remaining 200 reports were dubious. Dubious reports are checked up through our channels. Two published reports were removed after we had received letters from the reported bribe-takers, who described the real situation.

One report was about a doctor who took money for treatment, but it turned out later that she worked for a commercial company, and the money was a legal fee for her work. The other report was about a teacher: he asked us to remove his name, and his colleagues confirmed that he had never taken bribes. We believed them as we always prefer to believe those who ask us to remove their names.

There was one more person who asked us to remove his name. We checked up on him and found out that, besides taking a bribe, he had once given a bribe himself. Moreover, the report about his corruption was detailed and well-grounded, while his explanation was not. That’s why we decided to leave his name in the list and to send him a link to the source pointing to his bribe-giving.

We have one more principle: we never place information about people working in commercial structures. True, there are cases of kickback in commercial structures too, but only civil servants can take bribes.

Now, we have bought a lie detector that allows us to work with voice messages, and the new version of our site will have a phone with a lie detector. If a person disagrees with our information about him, he can call us and, if willing, can pass a test. If the test shows that he does not lie, we will remove the information.

REGNUM: Which of the reports you receive are the most important?

We receive many reports about vice mayors, vice governors, mayors, who are reported to take quite big bribes, mostly, for allotting land plots. It seems quite credible to us. Nobody says anything about it loudly, but there are lots of legal materials about such deals by mayors and governors, and we have access to them.

REGNUM: One of the declared tasks of your site is to draw the attention of the law enforcement agencies, but law enforcers do not consider anonymous reports, do they?

Some of our reports are anonymous, but others are not: some reports contain real names and addresses. We already have over 40 such reports and we keep them close to wide public as the reporters want this information to be sent to the law enforcers. Now that the Public Prosecutor’s Office does not have messenger system, we rewrite the reports and send them in a written form. We have already sent two such letters. They in the Public Prosecutor’s Office have promised us to launch messenger system this month.

REGNUM: And what will become of your project then?

Then, any person will be able to push the button “send to the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” and his report will be automatically sent to the addressee. The goal of our site is to make the information about bribery widely accessible.

REGNUM: Some time ago your site faced technical problems and now it is inaccessible. Why?

On Nov 9-13 we were attacked on a daily basis. When the offensive reached a critical point, our host company denied us further services. Investigation is underway. It is already known that the attacks came from Primorye (Far East of Russia). Besides, as far as we know, the host company has received a call warning that, if they continued providing us with hosting, they would face serious problems, up to seizure of the server. As a result, we were forced to buy a physical server and to solve our further problems on our own. Since we have very serious contacts with the law enforcers, we think that we will solve this problem. Without contacts on top level we would not be able to open such a site as we would not be able to check up the information we receive.

REGNUM: After she recent Kovrovsky case — when a criminal action was brought against one of the visitors who used a nickname and insulted a governor — and many similar cases, people will think thrice before making public information about misdeeds by officials, won’t they?

We give top priority to confidentially and, even if our server is removed, we have taken necessary measures to prevent this from happening.

Besides, we have “mirror” sites in Canada.

REGNUM: It costs a lot to design and maintain such a site. Do you take the money from your own pockets?

Yes, we do, but we get our money back by placing ads on our site.

REGNUM: I understand that you want the authors of the project to remain anonymous, but who are the “we”?

We are internet specialists working in the sphere of information. We are civil servants who don’t take bribes. We are not law enforcers, but we contact with them in our work. We are people who hate to see what is going on around.