The Dossier Center has recently obtained documents from Russia’s largest energy company Rosneft which show that the government’s grand corporate mobilization scheme did in fact become a reality on election day.  The documents show that 95.5%  of the company’s 320,000 employees — in total 309,607 people — made it to polling stations on March 18.

Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin is widely considered one of Vladimir Putin’s “right hand man”, as well as one of Russia’s most politically-involved businessmen.  Leaked documents before the election showed an extensive mobilisation scheme that aimed to increase voter turnout during the presidential elections by forcing directors of state-owned companies and their employees to go out and vote.

The documents show an unprecedented range of measures deployed by the government in order to coerce the largely politically passive population into voting.  Each corporation was appointed a specific person, often the company president or vice-president, who was responsible for “motivating” and monitoring voter turnout and reporting the results back to the presidential administration.

Vladimir Putin’s political strategists also developed intimate instructions for the heads of state-owned corporations with the aim of providing 100% participation of employees and their family members in the March 18 presidential elections.

Special instructions provided by the Putin administration during election day set out requirements down to the smallest details and time frames such as reminder calls between 12:00 and 14:00, using employee registers to monitor attendance, yet more reminder calls between 15:00 and 19:00 for those who didn’t vote before 14:00. In addition, special “motivational” speeches were set up for call centres for people from different segments of society (more formal and informal).

39 other companies were forced to participate in the Kremlin’s corporate mobilization project, among them: Gazprom, Rostech, Rostelecom, Russian Railways, Russian Post, VTB Bank and others.  The Dossier Center called up those individuals who were responsible for the mobilization project in various companies as stated in the official documents.  Unsurprisingly, not one of them would admit to the existence of such a project.  Respondents claimed that the initiative was not related to increasing voter turnout, or in many other cases simply hung up the phone and declined to comment.

This controversial state-initiated mobilisation project runs counter to Russian federal law, which states that “no one has the right to influence citizens with a view to compelling him to participate or not to participate in the election of the president of the Russian federation…”

The Dossier Center, one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s most recent projects, is aimed at assisting in the development and strengthening of the rule of law and civil society in Russia.  The Center investigates activities conducted by Russian state officials and businessmen, identifies violations of the law and assists in opening criminal cases against them.