Dear Mr Borodin,

You must be following the surrealistic events taking place in Russia, but the latest bluffing by government “corruption fighters” simply cannot leave me indifferent.

Sergei Stepashin, whom you have known for quite a while, has distinguished himself again this week. At an anti-corruption forum, which, ironically, takes place at the Audit Chamber, he decided to show how his office is working on Kremlin orders by sending letters to governments of civilized nations. “I sent a letter to my colleague, the auditor general of the United Kingdom, where Mr Borodin is seeking political asylum, in which letter I list all the facts of violations committed by this ill-fated banker that have been discovered by the Audit Chamber.”

Beyond belief! Who cares what you, “stout, fat, takes bribes” (© Zhirinovsky), write to your colleagues?! Rather: Who believes in your writing at all? A pulp-writer worse than Markin. The latter, by the way, would for sure think twice before going out with such initiatives. It is said that criminals are attracted to the site of their crime. In the same manner, Stepashin keeps talking nonsense about the case of the Bank of Moscow. He simply cannot stop, his ill imagination will not let him do so.

Mr Stepashin does not understand that his “colleagues” in sane countries are sane people with common sense. It is evident to any sane person that all those letters, statements and inarticulate comments about the absence of political motivation in the takeover of the Bank of Moscow are an obvious evidence to the contrary.

In fact, this performance by Stepashin displays symptoms of an illness widely spread among Russian officials, where sensible activity is inaccessible to them, where they fail to understand what other people are saying, where outbursts of unmotivated anger predominate, etc. All those symptoms are typical of down-and-out idiots.

All the best from representatives of your former team

Comment from A. Borodin: Personally, I would not like to fall as low as argue with the protagonist of the letter, but it was impossible to leave such an outsider’s view unpublished. It says it all perfectly.