Hi! My name is Sveta, and I’m one of the authors of an article about a company that sells places in the queue...

Hi! My name is Sveta, and I’m one of the authors of an article about a company that sells places in the queue for Russian consulates.

I had seen ads for this service before I started writing about it. I needed to visit a Russian consulate myself, so I joined the queue in two cities. In the first, there were more than a thousand people ahead of me; in the second, there were 146.

Of course, the queues were moving! For example, after three weeks, my number in the second city did indeed change: I moved up to 145th.

My friends complained about the queues too—one of them waited more than six months to arrange a power of attorney. Meanwhile, consulate websites suggested contacting the Foreign Ministry’s partner, Consul Prime, “to reduce waiting times in the queue.”

I won’t pretend I wasn’t tempted to contact the company myself: a consular appointment in two weeks versus a wait of many months. But I decided not to spend the money. Instead, I wondered: “How do they do it?” We at Verstka found the answer and explain it in our article.

Posing as a customer, I spoke to Consul Prime employees. They told me they would find me a slot, help me put together my documents and even accompany me to the consulate. They also explained how they manage to get those “expedited” slots.

When I raised my concern that the consulate might not realize I had come through the “Foreign Ministry’s partner” and would make me wait a long time, they assured me: “The whole consulate will know you’re from us.” That phrase, by the way, made me feel both reassured and more anxious, even though I was no longer actually planning to go anywhere.

I also spoke to customers of the service. It turned out that in practice, things sometimes don’t go as perfectly as the company’s employees promise: they make mistakes, and customers have to double-check the documents themselves and correct the wording. Sometimes this leads the consulate to refuse to accept the documents altogether.

In short, Consul Prime is first and foremost a private company that became an official partner of the Foreign Ministry and collects Russians’ personal data. It was founded by associates of oligarch Roman Abramovich. Customers pay the company money, and it promises them fast access to the consulate. The only problem is that, against this backdrop, the free queue moves even more slowly.

We explain why in Verstka’s investigation (with a VPN):

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Verstka

The Helpful Oligarch: How Abramovich’s Associates Built a Business at Russian Consulates

Customers of a private company get priority slots at consulates, while Russians in the free queue have to wait for months