One of the key members of Yeltsin's election headquarters, Arkady Evstafiev, remembers 1996
"I've never carried a Xerox box."
How Chubais and Korzhakov fought, whether there were “carousels” in 1996, and what Zyuganov would have done if he had won, one of the key members of Yeltsin’s election headquarters, Arkady Evstafiev, tells Gazeta.Ru.
The presidential election campaign was new for us, although we already had significant experience in conducting PR campaigns on a national scale. At one time we already had to deal with unusual, new things - the process of privatization.
We carried out not only a large advertising campaign, but also a huge amount of work related to PR: it was necessary to explain to people the essence of privatization and how to behave under various options. The work was not easy; we had to do everything for the first time and in difficult circumstances. The Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR did not want to pass laws that would make privatization convenient for everyone. By the way, it was the Supreme Council that insisted on the issuance of privatization checks - “vouchers”.
By that time, I had knowledge of how American and European PR specialists work. Now they say they also took part in the campaign. But a huge share of the work was done by Russian hands.
I remember well Yeltsin’s personal participation in the campaign, when he went on stage, the posters “Vote with your heart”, “Vote or lose”. These were beautiful and bright ideas, and they were implemented with high quality.
I was invited to work at the headquarters by Anatoly Chubais when it became obvious that the other heads of the headquarters - [Alexander] Korzhakov, [Oleg] Soskovets - did everything according to Soviet patterns. They carried out orders, and all this resembled pure party activity, while no one guaranteed the result.
There was no obvious conflict between the Chubais and Korzhakov groups, just a completely different vision of the country’s development paths.
The members of our team, which worked under the leadership of Chubais, were like-minded people and ideologically supported Yeltsin. In very difficult conditions, he laid the foundations of democracy, freedom and development of the country. Literally pulled her out of the quagmire of obscurantism and degradation.
Nowadays, thinking people are sometimes contemptuously called “creaks”, “hamsters”, but it was under Yeltsin that a generation of thinking people was born who strive to rely on their own strengths and do not want to live in the gray paradigm of paternalism, hoping for a state that will give them everything.
Thanks to Yeltsin, people appeared who can be critical of themselves and their actions. Accordingly, they are critical and demanding of power.
The 1996 presidential election was truly competitive, the level of competition was incredibly high. Such concepts as “stuffing” and “carousel” were completely absent. Some governor could speak for Zyuganov, someone for Boris Nikolayevich, there was no order of votes.
Society was incredibly divided and the presidential campaign was difficult. We must remember what 1996 was like: the average oil price was $20, the budget was empty, many people felt that there would be no food tomorrow.
During the campaign, my tasks included, among other things, negotiations with representatives of the public. Every day calls were made, sometimes incredible offers were made. We met many people - mobile communications were not so widespread at that time. It was a terrible job from morning to night, and the proposals were very different: from quite sensible ones to the proposal to use space aliens in the campaign...
I am often asked about the notorious “copier box,” and my position has not changed in 20 years: I have never carried this box. I don't know where she came from. If I knew, I forgot.
When everything happened, the box was on the floor, and one of the armed men demanded that [Sergei] Lisovsky take this box and carry it. I told him: “Don’t you dare touch.” They took the box themselves and carried it to the security room. I asked them to fingerprint her, but they didn't. It is difficult to suspect them of such unprofessionalism. It was definitely a provocation on their part; the headquarters never hid anything from them. There is a saying: the “Cheburashka effect” has worked - I hear everything, I understand nothing.
The purpose of this provocation, I believe, was to discredit that part of the election headquarters that worked under the leadership of Chubais. They couldn’t interfere, but they launched a “duck” that is still “flying” across various media outlets.
But despite these troubles, I am glad that I worked at the headquarters, and would not hesitate to go there again. Recently Sergei Lisovsky called me and congratulated me on the 20th anniversary of those events, we laughed and remembered our joint work.
Then, however, we had no time to laugh, we understood that if we defeated the Zyuganovs, we would not expect mercy. And today I do not agree with Chubais, who says that we can return to Sovietism, but we cannot return to communism.
I wonder why educated adults have such a short historical memory. Sometimes it seems to me that this is the legacy of a lie Soviet period, when everyone said “yes” in public, but “no” in the kitchen, and this left an imprint on psychology. It seems that a general psychosis has begun in the country, when everything is easily changed. Many of today's politicians, even of the highest rank, consider it almost their duty to criticize the “dashing nineties.”
But none of them will ask themselves the question: who would he be now if Zyuganov had won in 1996?
Now we are again at a crossroads. The authorities have succumbed to the temptation to easily and non-competitively solve problems through unspoken agreements with society - ephemeral stability for loyalty. As a result, a huge number of smart, qualified, talented people left Russia.
Russia vitally needs the changes initiated by President Yeltsin. So that later it doesn’t turn out like the head of the Soviet state Yuri Andropov once said: “We don’t know the society in which we live.”
On June 19, 1996, activists from Boris Yeltsin’s election headquarters, Sergei Lisovsky and Arkady Evstafiev, were detained near the Government House of Russia. As reported by the media, the detainees were carrying a Xerox box in their hands, which contained $500 thousand. The phrase “Xerox box” instantly became popular. In 1997, this term was used in 0.02% of publications in the Russian press, which is comparable to the use in the media of the phrase “wet in the toilet” in 2000. Meanwhile, the notorious box was not from a copier at all, but from Xerox A4 paper. A standard paper box has a length of 30.1 cm, a width of 22.5 cm and a height of 21.5 cm. Since the volume of a pack of 1000 $100 bills is 104.5 cm 3, such a box can fit a maximum of $1 million 393 thousand. In 1996, Xerox-5317 copiers were popular, the boxes from which had dimensions of 65x60x40 cm. Thus, in a box from a real copier, Sergei Lisovsky and Arkady Evstafiev could take $14 million 928 thousand from the White House, which is almost 30 times the amount found on them at the time of arrest.PAVEL CHERNIKOV
By 6.8% Russia's GDP increased in the first quarter of 2003 compared to the same period in 2002.
84th place Gazprom is included in the list of the 500 largest companies in Europe compiled by Handelsblatt and The Wall Street Journal. In total, there are 11 companies from Russia in the rating.
400 crimes, falling under the article “Terrorism”, was committed on Russian territory in 2002, reports the Prosecutor General’s Office.
2nd place Moscow is ranked in the ranking of the most expensive cities in the world to live, compiled by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Tokyo is in first place, St. Petersburg is in 12th position. The capital of Paraguay, Asuncion, is recognized as the cheapest of the major cities.
90 million rubles allocated by the Moscow government to prevent SARS. Of this, 17 million rubles will be spent on disinfection of public transport.
6.7 thousand crimes committed in Moscow by citizens of foreign countries in January-May 2003. 1.5 thousand crimes were committed against foreigners themselves.
27 thousand rubles The families of miners who died as a result of the June 16 accident at the Ziminka mine in Prokopyevsk will receive a one-time benefit from the Russian government.
In 24 countries The activities of emissaries of Chechen militants were noted, reports the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation. 16 funds and 4 banks were convicted of providing financial assistance to militants.
15th place MTS is ranked by Business Week magazine in the ranking of the world's most successful companies operating in the field of information technology. VimpelCom (Bee Line network operator) took 28th position.
35 military satellites Russia will launch into space in 2003, said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. Currently, the Russian orbital constellation includes about 100 military and dual-use satellites.
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New Russia 1990 – 2010: Historical Chronicles
“Secrets of the “copier box”
For our young fellow citizens, who today are in the socially active age of 18 to 40 years, due to a number of reasons, many important, significant events of our recent past are unknown, without knowledge and understanding of the essence of which it is impossible to have a correct objective understanding of the driving reasons, essence and content socio-political processes.
And a considerable number of such events are purposefully, consciously perverted, distorted, mythologized to please their direct inspirers, organizers and accomplices...
Be it the “murky” stories of the search for the “party gold” (1992), or the no less mysterious story with the “copier box”….
It is with the latter that we will begin our story.
This story began on one of the warm Moscow evenings on June 19, 1996.
The brief summary of “Chronicles of the main events of Russia in the 20th century” does not at all bring clarity to this issue:
“June 20 – Decrees of the President of the Russian Federation on exemption from job responsibilities Chief of Presidential Security A.V. Korzhakov, FSB Director M.I. Barsukov and First Deputy Prime Minister O.N. Soskovets in connection with their unsuccessful participation in election campaign B.N. Yeltsin and attempts to prevent the transfer of cash funds for his election campaign in the second round of elections...” (Brief chronicle of the main events of Russia in the twentieth century, M., 2004, p. 263).
In addition to absolutely incomprehensible, vague formulations, let us pay attention to the following factual error: Korzhakov’s position was actually called Head of the Presidential Security Service (SBP), at that time a strong and influential intelligence service, numbering tens of thousands of employees...
And so, St. Petersburg and Korzhakov and Barsukov knew about numerous violations and machinations of members of Yeltsin’s election headquarters, located in the “White House” (of the Russian government) on the “Free Russia” Square, and with the aim of “pressing down a little” the particularly presumptuous “democrats”, decided to detain 2 members of the election headquarters, who at about 11 o’clock at night were taking two “copier boxes” filled with... bank packages of North American “wooden rubles” from the Russian Government House. The volume of these “packages” suggests that we were talking about amounts that are multiples of 2 - 3 million dollars!
And in principle, these amounts had an almost legal origin: they were “salaries” for work in the “election headquarters of the presidential candidate Yeltsin.” But Korzhakov also knew that this fund was far from entirely legal, since it far exceeded the officially announced budget of the election campaign (for some documents on this issue, see A.E. Khinshtein’s book “The Kremlin. Yeltsin. Case History”). By the way, it was precisely this circumstance - the “leftist funds” of the election campaign that was the basis for the accusations against the current US President R. Nixon, which led to his resignation under the threat of impeachment.
But the aforementioned “embezzlers” were simply too lazy to openly tell the White House security about the “legal origin” of what they carried out of the government building Russian Federation"fees for work performed."
“The entire presidential army” stood up to “defend their own” from strangers, and Korzhakov, for whom I, however, do not have excessive sympathy, fell victim to the unscrupulous “hardware game” of the presidential candidate’s closest associates. And “faithful Ruslan” - Korzhakov was sacrificed to the “interests” of the new “presidential family”, which went down in history under the name “seven bankers”.
This, however, is a completely different story.....
Reviews
Yes, not everyone will be so lucky: suddenly there will be confirmation of what was said, and even first-hand, that is, from the mouth!:
Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko:
About the copier box:
“Korzhakov, on behalf of the pope, was responsible for control over all the finances of the election campaign. Therefore, throughout the entire election campaign, he carefully watched as Lisovsky, as well as many others, received money dozens of times - in Xerox boxes, in boxes of writing paper, in other boxes, in cases, in whatever It was convenient to bring money and pay. Nothing else happened that time either. Lisovsky received the money. In the presence of Evstafiev. I had to pay their artists the next day. For the report. And then submit this report to headquarters. As it always was before. Korzhakov gave the command to arrest them. The whole story. This cannot be called anything other than stupidity, meanness and betrayal.”
Summary of the interview in "MK" 01/19/10
Former head of the security service of the first President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin, Alexander Korzhakov, in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets, commented on the blog posts of Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Yumasheva
In particular, Korzhakov denied Yumasheva’s words about his role in the story with “Xerox boxes.” According to him, he detained Yeltsin’s campaign headquarters employees Lisovsky and Evstafiev, who were taking 500 thousand dollars out of the White House, on instructions from the president himself: “rumors started “that the money intended for the elections is being stolen,” Yumasheva wrote that Korzhakov tried to “curate favor with the pope” and “eliminate strengthened competitors and regain the slipping power,” and regarded his act as “stupidity, meanness and betrayal” (The money was intended to pay for performances by artists who supported Yeltsin)
In addition, Korzhakov denied Yumasheva’s words that when he left, he “stole all the financial documents of the election campaign,” which were later published. At the same time, in the book “Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn to Dusk,” Korzhakov, as he himself stated, published the documents “not financial, but genuine” (“I simply had them as a member of the Election Council - ex officio”) Korzhakov also denied the statement that, while running for the Duma, he himself paid for speeches in his support in a similar way (According to Yumasheva, Yeltsin had the opportunity to prove this, but he did not take revenge)
A State Duma deputy from United Russia also answered the question “why Tatyana Yumasheva writes very well about Roman Abramovich, but not so much about Berezovsky.” According to Korzhakov, when Yumasheva became Yeltsin’s image adviser, Abramovich “brought her a normal suitcase like this every month with dollars" straight to the Kremlin
Korzhakov stated that entries in t-yumasheva’s LiveJournal are being edited former leader Yeltsin administration by Valentin Yumashev (“She’s tongue-tied, but I recognize his style”), but said that he would not sue
K. Petrova
The editors received a tape with a video recording of the incident with the removal of money from the White House.
Late at night on June 20, the television program "Cafe Oblomov" was
was unexpectedly interrupted, and the excited Evgeny Kiselev, the host of Itogi, told the night owls that either a coup d'etat or something else terrible could happen in Russia any minute.
Closer to the morning, it became clear that the reason for such serious allegations was the detention at the entrance of the Government House of two employees of Boris Yeltsin's election headquarters - the president of the LIS "S" company Sergei Lisovsky and assistant A. Chubais Arkadia Evstafieva .
They allegedly tried to take out half a million US dollars in a Xerox box without special permission. [Meanwhile, the notorious box was not from a copier at all, but from Xerox A4 paper. A standard paper box is 30.1 cm long, 22.5 cm wide and 21.5 cm high. See photo - approx. Kompromat.Ru].
It was this box that actually started the scandal.
Anatoly Chubais argued that there was no money. Representatives of law enforcement agencies insisted on the opposite. The scandal broke out with renewed vigor when the chairman of the Duma committee, Viktor Ilyukhin, held a press conference on the eve of the second round of elections and showed journalists a fragment of a video recording of the interrogation of a hitherto unknown Mr. B.A. Lavrov, an employee of one of the commercial banks. This Lavrov told the investigators who asked to transfer half a million dollars and to whom.
Then history began to develop in a more civilized manner. Messrs. Evstafiev and Lisovsky hired well-known lawyers, and the Russian Military Prosecutor's Office checked the correctness of the actions of the presidential security service.
Anatoly Chubais was also summoned to testify before the military prosecutor. Alas, the prosecutor's office did not find any illegal actions on the part of the special services.
This is just a brief summary of the incident, which received an unexpected continuation in our magazine "Faces." Shortly before the release of the third issue, a man called the editorial office and offered to send “very interesting photographs.” The photographs turned out to be really interesting - they showed a copier box, and money, and the dejected gentlemen Evstafiev and Lisovsky, and Lavrov... But the quality of the photographs turned out to be so low - they were clearly photographed from a television screen - that it was impossible to publish them in the magazine it is forbidden. 06 This is what we told the stranger who called again.
A couple of days later we received a videotape, part of which, apparently, was shown by Viktor Ilyukhin at the press conference.
After watching the video, we took new photographs and tried to conduct our own investigation of the events that led to the scandalous revelations, the resignation of generals Korzhakov, Barsukov and Soskovets, who “joined them.”
So, on June 19 at 17:20, at the second entrance of the Government House, a senior lieutenant and a police major stopped Messrs. Evstafiev and Lisovsky. Sergei Lisovsky was holding a large box with the inscription “Xerox” in his hands, tied with a white rope. The police asked to see a special permit
for removal of material assets. There was no such document, and then Mr. Lisovsky was asked to untie the rope and show what was in the box.
So the police officers discovered half a million American dollars.
Further events developed in the White House itself. At 6:45 p.m., members of the presidential security service entered room 2-17. This is the office of the deputy head of the foreign loans department. Mr. Lavrov was sitting in it.
From his words it became clear that in March of this year he became part of the control and accounting group of the headquarters for the election campaign of Boris Yeltsin. On the morning of June 19, Lavrov met with Kuznetsov, who asked him to hand over the currency to Mr. Evstafiev.
Evstafiev came to the meeting with Lisovsky, they packed the money in a box, and Lisovsky left some kind of receipt confirming receipt of half a million dollars. The meeting lasted several minutes, after which Evstafiev went to see off Lisovsky, and Lavrov remained waiting for Arkady in the office. It is curious that Lavrov took out a little more money from the safe - $538,850. Lavrov put 38,850 separately in an envelope and hid the money in his briefcase. To whom they were intended, Mr. Lavrov, according to him, did not know.
Evstafiev never came, but security officers showed up and conducted an interrogation. All three were interrogated. They had to give testimony until almost four in the morning - the time is clearly visible in the photographs. Arkady Evstafiev's blood pressure jumped sharply (160 to 110). The doctor was called. She offered to give an injection, but the patient refused. Then everyone was released. This story raises many questions. Why did Anatoly Chubais claim that there was no money, knowing about the video recording and interrogation reports?
Why did he even need to artificially inflate events that no one except the participants might have known about? After all, it remains to be seen what kind of scandal the communists will organize, citing the discovered “black” money from Yeltsin’s election campaign. If this incident (by the way, with a huge risk for victory in the second round) was used only to provoke the resignation of General Korzhakov and other political opponents, then doesn’t the chosen method compromise Anatoly Borisovich much more than others?
And, finally, what and who prompted you to hand over the video tape to the editorial office of “Lits”? Maybe the very “war of compromising evidence” that Chubais’s team is expecting any day is beginning?
We hope that in the next issue of "Faces" these questions will be answered by the main characters in this story: Anatoly Chubais and Alexander Korzhakov.
More about the “copier box” in other sections:
2. “Wiretapping” conversation between Chubais and Ilyushin (presidential aide) and a certain Krasavchenko [later it turned out that it was Sergei Zverev]
On February 11, an An-148 of Saratov Airlines that took off from Domodedovo towards Orsk crashed in the Moscow region. 55.5% of the carrier’s shares belong to the Soyuz Invest company, which is owned by businessman Arkady Evstafiev. And another 26.63% is held by the Energy Union he heads. The entrepreneur has already appeared in four criminal cases, but was not convicted in any of them. Who is Arkady Evstafiev and how his career developed - in the material “360”.
Education and early career
Open sources indicate that Arkady Evstafiev was born on March 10, 1960 in Saratov. In 1977 he graduated from local secondary school No. 42, in 1982 - Saratov State University majoring in applied mathematics, in 1986 - High school KGB, and in 1990 - the Diplomatic Academy of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
After the Diplomatic Academy, Evstafiev was sent to work in the Ministry’s Information Department. There he took the position of second secretary and supervised journalists from the Scandinavian countries and Great Britain. A year later he moved to the press service of the Russian government. In 1992–1995, he held the position of adviser and press secretary to First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, in particular, he oversaw the advertising campaign “PrivatizA!tsiya”. He worked as deputy general director of Public Russian Television (OTR), but after the resignation of Chubais he was relieved of his post.
"Xerox Box"
In April 1996, Evstafiev worked at the election headquarters of then President Boris Yeltsin. On the evening of June 19, he and the head of the election campaign, Sergei Lisovsky, were detained at the exit from the Government House with the famous “copier box” containing half a million dollars. Due to a violation of the rules on currency transactions, Kommersant reported, a criminal case was opened. After detention and interrogation, Lisovsky and Evstafiev were released. They stated that they had not seen any box.
“It was a provocation. Well directed. We were simply set up. I can say about myself: I was too naive then. He was very sincere about politics, very emotional,” Lisovsky told Rossiyskaya Gazeta almost 10 years after the incident.
“I am often asked about the notorious “copier box,” and my position has not changed in 20 years: I have never carried this box. I don't know where she came from. If I knew, I forgot,” Gazeta.ru quotes Evstafiev as saying.
Chubais suggested at a press conference that the box was planted by the security forces. Open sources note that informal pressure was also exerted by other politicians interested in Yeltsin’s victory. As a result, the owners of the money were not found, and the case was closed “for lack of evidence of a crime.” The initiators of the detention - Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, FSB director Mikhail Barsukov and head of the presidential security service Alexander Korzhakov - lost their positions.
In August 1996, Evstafiev went to the Center for the Protection of Private Property, then became deputy general director of the PR and GR service of Mosenergo.
"The Case of Writers"
At the end of 1997, a book scandal occurred in the country. Major government figures became its defendants. Chubais, Kokh, Maxim Boyko, Alexander Kazakov, Pyotr Mostovoy, Evstafiev and others received from the Segodnya-Press publishing house, controlled by the Onexim group, $90 thousand each as an advance for the then unwritten book “The History of Russian Privatization.” Investigators became interested in the excessively inflated fees of co-authors.
However, according to newspapers, the case was closed in 1999. Boris Yeltsin removed Chubais from the post of Minister of Finance, leaving him as First Deputy Prime Minister. The head of the FSDN, Mostovoy, and the head of the State Property Committee, Boyko, resigned, and Kazakov was relieved of his post. According to Kommersant, TV presenter Sergei Dorenko accused Evstafiev that the “writer” tried to bribe the heads of the Moscow bureau of Reuters so that they would publish material about the legality of the fees. However, in a telephone conversation with 360, he denied this information.
In 1999, Evstafiev unsuccessfully ran for the State Duma. He co-founded a number of commercial and trust companies, as well as investment funds, some of which, according to the FLB agency, were supervised by then-deputy government chairman Alfred Koch.
"Credits in the Fog"
In September 2001, Evstafiev became acting. General Director of Mosenergo, in April 2002 he officially headed the company. A little earlier, he became a defendant in a criminal case for the third time.
A statement to the police was received from the shareholder of SBS-Agro Bank Natalya Stepanova. In 1996–1997 financial institution issued preferential loans of more than five million dollars to the Civil Society Foundation and the Center for the Protection of Private Property, which were then headed by Evstafiev. The publication of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta noted that it was his signatures that were on the loan agreements. Then the bank “disappeared into the fog.” According to the applicant, this caused her great financial problems. But this case, like the previous ones, was hushed up, and then it was closed due to the lack of evidence of a crime.
Former capital mayor Yuri Luzhkov spoke extremely negatively against the appointment of Evstafiev as acting and then head of Mosenergo. The ex-mayor regularly expressed complaints about his activities, in particular in letters to President Vladimir Putin. On June 6, 2005, the head of state criticized Evstafiev because of major accident at the Chagino substation, after which he resigned. Lenta.ru reported this. According to others, he was dismissed from office by presidential decree due to inadequacy for his position.
In 2006, he headed the CJSC Investment Holding Energy Union.
"Pay your taxes"
In 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office opened a case against Evstafiev and Mosenergo chief accountant Tatyana Dronova for fraud and tax evasion in the amount of 105 million rubles for the period from January 2001 to December 2002. But this case was also closed. From 2008 to 2009, Dronova worked as deputy general director for strategy and development of the Energy Union, and in 2009 she joined the board of directors of the small Saratov bank Agroros, the key beneficiary of which is Arkady Evstafiev.
55.55% of the shares of Saratov Airlines belong to Soyuz Invest LLC, whose owner is Evstafiev. Another 26.63% of the shares are owned by the Energy Union he heads, RBC reported with reference to the SPARK database. The assistant to lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who represented the interests of Lisovsky in the box case and Evstafiev in the loan case, the secretary of ex-Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets and former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov refused to comment to 360.
