Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia's Federal Investigative Committee, bears his soul in a lecture to university students

Alexander Bastrykin isn’t just a secret poet and the head of Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee — he’s also a newly appointed professor at St. Petersburg State University. In this capacity, he delivered his first lecture on Saturday, April 7, treating students to a bizarre, somewhat rambling speech.

Things Alexander Bastrykin said in his Saturday lecture

• The son of Oleg Deripaska (yes, the beleaguered billionaire) was one of the young men who climbed a lamppost in Moscow’s Pushkin Square on March 26, 2017, during an anti-corruption protest organized by Alexey Navalny. “Screaming ‘Down with corruption!’ isn’t really for you, Deripaska’s son,” Bastrykin said. (According to Forbes, Deripaska’s two children are worth an estimated $2.6 billion.)
• If the government weren’t constantly extending economic amnesties, Deripaska would already be under criminal investigation in Russia. “In the 1990s, they carved up the economy through corruption, outright banditry, and deception. The state pretended that this era was over and forgave everyone,” Bastrykin complained, accusing certain “investigators and judges” of showing mercy when true patriotism called for punishment.
• The Russian government should stop granting amnesties. Instead, it should implement a policy of “total confiscation,” even going after “the mother-in-law and mother’s friends” (referring to Russian elites’ habit of hiding assets with family members). Russia needs to get international cooperation back on track, as well, in order to stop the rich from fleeing to Britain with all their wealth. “At least so their accounts are seized and sent here,” Bastrykin explained.
• Russia “built up its sovereignty thanks to military might, but the economy remains very weak.” Bastrykin said he would ditch the oligarchs and turn to small businesses to fix this problem.
• The shopping center in Kemerovo burned down in part because a children’s play area cut costs by using cheap foam blocks from China, instead of more expensive fireproof toys from the United States. “An American block costs $120, and a Chinese block is 20 cents. But it burns easily,” Bastrykin said.
• Long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is one of Bastrykin’s idols.
• Bastrykin currently manages 16,000 investigators and that’s plenty. He doesn’t want command of a theoretical Joint Investigative Committee whose staff could reach 60,000 people. He said he currently gets as many as 1,500 complaints against his own subordinates every week, but it’s still too soon to talk about liquidating the Investigative Committee, he argues, because the agency is still fairly new.