Who is the vendor?

According to the general prosecutor's office, Nevolin obtained the Abkhaz passport from an unknown mediator in 2007 and paid 300,000 roubles for it. Such a high price of Abkhaz passports in the "black market" is due to the fact that it is impossible to purchase property in the republic without a passport. That is precisely what Nevolin wanted. A few days after he obtained the passport, he bought a house in Gudauta.

A few weeks earlier, the Abkhaz general prosecutor's office announced the disappearance of a big number of Abkhaz passports revealed after stock-taking.

The only way to find these passports is to control real estate sales and purchases. All notaries that formalize real estate agreements in Abkhazia are under control. Abkhazia is such a small republic, that the holders of such documents will sooner or later gradually come to the surface. Konstantin Nevolin is one of them. He was traced precisely at a notary.

There have been cases, when buyers of passports were exposed, but they failed to catch any of the vendors. It is clear that if someone is able to illegally buy Abkhaz passports, there are vendors somewhere too. If the law enforcers fail to find their traces, the struggle against illegal passports will become endless.

Over the past month, this country has familiarized itself with many new "fellow citizens", including Georgian criminal bosses, who managed to obtain Abkhaz passports with different methods. Although individual cases have become more frequent, none of the personnel of passport services involved in this scheme and illegally issuing passports has ever been named. "Investigation is under way," the prosecutor says in a business-like manner and it seems that he is speaking about someone, who is selling tram tickets, not passports that have numbers, serial numbers, dates of issue, and, finally, the signatures of the people who issued them. It is not necessary to be Sherlock Holmes to investigate this.

It is clear that vendors cannot be found, because there is no political will. The problem lies not in the fact that someone is afraid of the personnel of passport services. They simply know that if they drive them into the corner, they will start speaking.

The circle of the people linked to this scheme is obviously very wide. It is clear that ordinary workers of passport services are not the main actors in the business of illegal trade in passports, where one passport costs 300,000 roubles. You can illegally sell passports on a couple of occasions, but you need top protectors in all structures, including the presidential administration, to transform this into big business.

Are investigation agencies ready to untie the knot? Rather no than yes. Because if you look into the scheme to the end, you can expose Abkhazia's entire corruption system, which is the tool for governing this country today. This is tantamount to a revolution and we need no revolution. As people at the "top" like to repeat in our country, "we do not need reforms for the sake of reforms". In short, we are combating only Nevolins for now, being unable to find vendors. In the meantime, Abkhaz passports have become a significant source of local business.

The terminology used in the article belongs to the author and not “Liberali”.

The article is prepared with support of Heinrich Boell Foundation. The publication statements and ideas do not necessarily express the Heinrich Boell Foundation opinion.