Russia has been hit by another wave of COVID-19: the Delta strain has been replaced by Omicron. In the first working week of 2022, the official incidence almost doubled, from 15,000 to 30,000 new cases per day. While the authorities are calculating the level of herd immunity, calling for vaccinations and thinking about introducing new restrictive measures, fake coronavirus vaccination certificates have again begun to be sold on the Internet. Novaya Gazeta, together with Important Stories*, studied data from the regions in order to understand how many Russians have actually been vaccinated and why law enforcement agencies are in no hurry to deal with false certificates.
Photo: RIA Novosti
The request for the purchase of fake certificates appeared in June 2021, when Moscow introduced the entrance to cafes and restaurants using QR codes and mandatory vaccination for some residents. Then, sites selling fake documents began to be massively registered on the Internet.
Another surge occurred in November 2021, when a bill on QR codes was submitted to the State Duma, and in Tatarstan, the Kamchatka Territory and a number of other regions, unvaccinated citizens were banned from using public transport. At the beginning of 2022, another wave of coronavirus came to Russia. The authorities are again talking about restrictions, and the number of sites offering to buy certificates has started to grow again.
We collected data on sites registered in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet (.ru and .rf) from May 1, 2021 to January 17, 2022. The graph shows how the number of websites with the words “vaccine”, “certificate”, “buy a certificate”, “public services”, “satellite” and the same words in Latin has changed.
“It is not possible to estimate the share of fake certificates. Data on falsification of documents is not currently confirmed. A decision on further actions regarding fake certificates and their owners can be made after such facts are revealed, ”wrote representatives of the Ministry of Health of the Sakhalin Region.
It is difficult to calculate the exact total number of purchased certificates. Not a single Russian agency publishes data on how many patients with a fake certificate ended up in the hospital or how many QR codes were sold by fraudsters detained by the police. We sent inquiries to the regional ministries and departments responsible for health care, but none of the 85 departments responded on the merits.
What other regions answered
Ministry of Health of Khakassia:
< p>“The Ministry of Health of Khakassia is not authorized to make assessments regarding fake vaccination certificates in the region. Cancellation of fake certificates can only occur after this fact is proven by law enforcement agencies. No such court decisions have yet been made in Khakassia.”
Department of Health of the Vladimir Region:
“The Department of Health of the Vladimir Region does not have accurate information on the number of fake certificates against a new coronavirus infection detected. We recommend that you contact the law enforcement agencies on this issue.”
Ministry of Health of the Astrakhan Region:
“The issue of legal assessment and quantitative indicators of fake certificates in the Astrakhan Region is within the competence law enforcement agencies.”
Ministry of Health of Udmurtia:
“The issue of revealing the facts of the distribution of fake medical documents related to vaccination against coronavirus infection in the territory of the Udmurt Republic is the prerogative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the UR. The Ministry of Health of the UR cooperates with this agency in providing information on individual facts of suspicion of forgery, but does not have information on the proportion of fake certificates detected.”
Selling or buying a certificate is a criminal offense. The number of cases initiated in connection with this is the only official indicator that can reflect the situation with counterfeit vaccines. However, the data of the authorities differ here. As the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs told Novaya Gazeta,
from March 2020 to November 2021, 673 cases were initiated in Russia for falsifying certificates and PCR tests, and in December, President Vladimir Putin at the annual press conference conference spoke about 270 cases.
To understand how things are with fake certificates in different Russian regions, we interviewed all the regional departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. We managed to get answers from 70 departments out of 85, in total they opened 472 criminal cases on “forgery of documents in connection with the coronavirus infection”. In the total volume of cases of forgery of documents, this is not much: according to the Prosecutor General's Office, more than 20,000 such cases were investigated in the country in 2020 alone. jpg» />
Almost two-thirds of the subjects (51 regions) are reluctant to deal with the sale of fake certificates: there are fewer than one criminal case per 100,000 people who received a vaccination certificate. In nine other regions, not a single case of counterfeiting was found. The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug has become the leader in the fight against fake certificates, where there are almost seven criminal cases for falsifying vaccination documents per 100,000 holders of vaccination certificates. It is followed by the Tambov (five cases) and Ivanovo (three cases) regions.
How many fake certificates can be hidden behind one criminal case is not exactly known. So, in July, the Moscow police reported that more than 700 fake certificates were seized in the capital and more than 60 criminal cases were initiated. Thus, for one case there can be either one fake certificate, or several tens or even hundreds.
“It depends on the number of episodes. There may be one criminal case, but a thousand certificates may be issued there, for example, or one may be issued. In addition, this figure may change in the course of the investigation: people are being interviewed, documents are being raised, and it turns out that there were much more certificates,” Sergey Tokarev, senior partner at Q&A, told Novaya Gazeta.
In reality there are probably more fake vaccinations than criminal cases,
Tokarev notes. As follows from the answers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, such cases usually go under articles on forgery of documents (Article 327 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), fraud (Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), petty bribery (Article 291.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) or abuse of official powers (Article 285 of the Criminal Code). RF). According to the lawyer, the disclosure of these crimes is not highly valued in law enforcement statistics, so the police are not very active on them.
Criminal cases on the sale of fake certificates are really reluctant to open. For example, in November, the Moscow department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to initiate a case on the application of journalist Mikhail Zelensky in connection with the sale of fake vaccination documents on Instagram. The department said that the social network is registered outside of Russia, so it is “not possible” to request information about its administrators.