Look how neatly we caught these crooks from United Russia.
In June 2013, officials in Chita decided to build a kindergarten for 220 children and allocated 178 million rubles for it.
Here is the current governor of Zabaykalsky Krai, Ilkovsky (then acting governor), ceremonially pouring the first concrete into the building’s foundation.
The tender was, of course, "won" by local United Russia member and regional legislative assembly deputy Alexander Filonich, who owns the winning company, OAO "RUS."
Then, in November 2013, another tender was announced for the kindergarten’s "completion" (!!). That one was also "won" by United Russia member Filonich, for 45 million rubles.
All the money was paid out and spent.
Since the tender had been rigged from the very beginning, we took up the case (it was handled by Valery Zolotukhin from RosPil, an anti-corruption project) and found that the crooks had pulled off a classic scam: double payment for a number of jobs. Both the first and second auctions included the exact same items: work on the windows, floors, roof, and attic.
What’s more, the work was accepted, the completion certificates were signed, and so on—and then it was paid for all over again.
In total, we identified 30 million rubles in duplicate payments.
We managed to convince the local FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service), which conducted an inspection and confirmed everything, issued a decision imposing an administrative fine, and forwarded the inspection results to the FSB, the Interior Ministry, the Investigative Committee, and the local audit chamber.
We’ve stocked up on popcorn and are watching closely to see what happens next:
on the one hand, there’s no way around it—they have to open a case and jail the crooks; on the other hand, they’re from "United Russia," so who knows:
This case, by the way, shows perfectly why it is so important to criminalize illicit enrichment. Here, United Russia members stole 30 million rubles from a kindergarten construction project. We caught them this time, but in ten similar cases, we don’t.
But they have to put the money somewhere, right? Real estate, an offshore company, a foreign bank account, a house in Spain. All of that can be traced, and in the beautiful Russia of the future, all these Filoniches can be jailed simply because they cannot explain where the money came from. That’s one more argument in favor of voting and supporting the #Twenty initiative.
P.S. If you like what the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) is doing, then take a look here.
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