The first report on the income and expenses of participants in the presidential campaign has been published

The Central Election Commission began publishing data on the receipt and expenditure of funds from the electoral accounts of presidential candidates. Only Vladimir Putin has so far managed to fully select the fund limit, and some contenders are running their campaign with virtually no money. Thus, self-nominated members of the Russian Rada and Anatoly Batashev have only 20 thousand rubles in their accounts. However, the lack of funds at the beginning of the campaign does not say much about the candidates, the expert warns.

According to the first summary (data as of January 8), the amount of funds invested by this moment in the election campaign by its participants has already exceeded half a billion rubles. The undisputed leader in terms of the size of the election fund was the current President Vladimir Putin, who does not yet have the status of a registered candidate: his fund reached the maximum size of 400 million rubles, and even exceeded it (72.2 million were returned to donors). The main sponsors of Mr. Putin’s campaign were regional support and development funds – structures that usually donate money to United Russia and its candidates. As follows from the published data, about 30 foundations contributed from 5 million to 28 million rubles to the presidential election fund. There is only one private donor listed; he contributed 200 thousand rubles. (at the same time, one refund was made to an individual, and also for an amount slightly exceeding 200 thousand rubles). And Vladimir Putin also spent the most – 33.5 million rubles, of which just over 11 million was spent on the production and distribution of campaign materials and 8 million on ensuring the collection of signatures.

In second place is the leader of the LDPR Leonid Slutsky (he has 30 million rubles on his account). 10 million and third place went to Vladislav Davankov, vice speaker of the State Duma from “New People”. The latter does not have any expenses listed in the certificate, but the press service of the Kommersant party explained that the first expenses simply did not have time to get into this report: “There have already been expenses – this is mainly related to the production of merch and campaign materials that we use at events, as well as small organizational expenses.”

The nominee of the Civil Initiative party, Boris Nadezhdin, collected 3.4 million rubles. The source of funds is not specified in the certificate, but it is indicated that 12 individuals contributed a total of 684 thousand rubles to the candidate’s fund. As Mr. Nadezhdin’s headquarters explained to Kommersant, funds for the campaign are being raised using crowdfunding: people donate small amounts in the region of 500–1000 rubles, but they are not reflected in the reporting. In total, according to the headquarters, about 7 thousand people have already made donations during the campaign, some even more than once.

The rest of the candidates have even less money: the leader of the Communists of Russia Sergei Malinkovich collected 330 thousand rubles, Sergei Baburin (Russian All-People’s Union) – 201 thousand rubles, and the fund of Andrei Bogdanov (Russian Party of Freedom and Justice) – only 70 thousand roubles. Self-nominees of the Russian Rada and Anatoly Batashev are even campaigning with an election fund of 20 thousand rubles. At the headquarters of Mrs. Russian, they explained to Kommersant that so far they are coping mainly with the help of volunteers, and even the collection of signatures is carried out by volunteers without stationary points – in fact, money has so far been spent only on printing signature sheets.

But State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Nikolai Kharitonov was not even included in the report (the first financial report he submitted was also “zero”). “This is a purely technical point,” Alexander Yushchenko, head of the press service of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, explained to Kommersant. “It is clear that the campaign involves expenses, expenses, of course, incomparable with the party in power, but nevertheless we have accumulated certain opportunities and will implement them.” The active phase of the communist’s campaign, according to Mr. Yushchenko, has already started: the candidate plans to travel to the Far East in the near future.

Electoral lawyer Roman Smirnov says that at the initial stage, the filling of candidates’ funds does not mean much: fundraising is not a quick process and often depends on the financial strategy of the candidate himself. Large parties prefer to deposit all the money into an account at once, but many do this throughout the campaign. However, some candidates initially need money only for the first weeks, Mr. Smirnov stipulates: there are often cases when people try to promote their business through politics. Therefore, even in the midst of collecting signatures, one should not expect that everything will be instantly reflected in the accounting department, the expert summarizes.

Anastasia Kornya, Grigory Leiba