Legal Notice

Nature of the Site

Kleptopedia is a public informational resource that organises open, published knowledge about structural features of the contemporary Russian political-economic system. It is designed according to the Data Beauty principle: scannable, citable, decision-usable knowledge. It is not:

original investigative journalism;
a real-time news feed;
an advocacy, campaign or fundraising platform;
a court of law or a substitute for official determinations.

Source Policy

All factual claims are required to be traceable to open, citable sources (primary documents, investigative journalism, academic monographs, think-tank reports). No claim is advanced solely on anonymous social-media posts or unverified single-source rumour. See Methodology and Source Evaluation Criteria.

Analytical Labels Are Not Judicial Findings

Terms such as “kleptocracy,” “mafia state,” “Uber Krysha,” “state–crime symbiosis” and the three analytical theses are secondary analytical descriptors drawn from critical literature. They are not judicial verdicts about any individual or organisation. Where a relationship is described, the site marks the difference between documented open-source consensus and contested or incomplete evidence.

Personal Data and Private Individuals

The site does not publish personal data of private individuals who are not already public figures in published sources. No doxxing, no calls to action against private persons, no material intended as incitement.

Limitations of the Evidence Base

Primary Russian state financial and security archives are largely inaccessible.
Quantitative estimates (wealth, illicit flows, black-cash volumes) are frequently contested.
Many security-service / criminal linkages rest on secondary reporting, third-country cases or testimony of varying reliability.
Absence of an entity or link on the site does not imply non-existence.

Full statement: Methodology – Limitations.

Intellectual Property of Sources

Quotations and citations of third-party works remain the property of their respective rights holders. The site provides attribution and links where available; it does not claim ownership of underlying source material.

Liability

Content is provided for informational and educational purposes. Users are responsible for verifying claims against primary sources before relying on them in legal, commercial or policy decisions. The project curators and contributors accept no liability for actions taken solely on the basis of this synthesis.