On the night of July 13, a terrible tragedy claimed the lives of 24 Russian paratroopers. A barracks building in the settlement of Svetly, Omsk Region, housing 337 servicemen, collapsed.
The story disappeared from television screens with astonishing speed; this is explained very well here. There has been no major public investigation. The Investigative Committee announced the arrest of the director of RemExStroy, the company that carried out repairs in these barracks.
We at ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) do not claim to have the ultimate truth, but even a simple review of the latest tenders involving RemExStroy tells us that corruption killed those 24 paratroopers.
And this corruption involved not only the contractors from RemExStroy, but also officials from the Defense Ministry, Spetsstroyengineering (which is also building the Vostochny Cosmodrome), and the state enterprise Spetsstroy.
See for yourself:
RemExStroy LLC carried out construction work for government clients—more specifically, for the security agencies: the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry.
In addition to construction work at the military base in the settlement of Svetly, the company also worked on the following sites (the title contains a link to the specific government contract, followed by the dates of the work and its cost):
In total, between 2011 and 2015, RemExStroy LLC “won” government contracts worth more than 2.6 billion rubles (2,657,818,644 rubles).
Why is “won” in quotation marks? Because in these tenders, both the company and the officials allocating the money were clearly cheating: in some of the tenders listed (for example, here), it was competing against a shell company.
And this collusion was organized in the most primitive way: the appearance of competition was created by RegionStroy LLC, which had THE VERY SAME FOUNDER—A.Yu. Dorofeyev. RegionStroy LLC is now formally listed as being founded by a certain Nikolai Yuryevich Abramov, but the company’s history is easy to trace.
Information from the Kontur.Focus database:
How could this be possible without corrupt collusion with officials from the Defense Ministry and Spetsstroy? We found the collusion in 30 minutes, and over there they have the military, internal security officers, FSB personnel, and everything else imaginable.
It is safe to say that officials from the Defense Ministry and Spetsstroy were skimming huge amounts of money from this construction work for several years, while RemExStroy, paying kickbacks of around 50 percent, simply cut corners on quality so it could do the job for roughly half the contract value and still make a profit.
As for the construction work itself at the Airborne Forces military base in the settlement of Svetly near Omsk, in 2013–2014 RemExStroy LLC won three subcontracting construction contracts at once. The work was to be carried out in several barracks at the base.
The collapsed Barracks No. 226 was repaired under this government contract, with a total value of 390,763,196 rubles. Two more contracts were signed for a total of 106,824,316 rubles (repair of Barracks No. 148, repair of Barracks No. 177).
As for the above-mentioned contract for a package of construction and installation work on the barracks, including the one that later collapsed, it also looks thoroughly corrupt.
The contract was won by RemExStroy LLC, which offered the maximum price, but later the amount of 408,550,611 rubles was reduced by agreement of the parties (along with a simultaneous reduction in the scope of construction work) to 390,763,196 rubles, while the completion deadline was extended from October 2013 to June 2014.
As we have now discovered, the tender documentation was missing mandatory documents required for construction—namely, the full project documentation. The documentation included only itemized cost estimates, but that is not enough to carry out construction. And the issue is not just a violation of public procurement law (failure to provide the full documentation is a serious violation), but the fact that it is fundamentally impossible to perform the work based only on the documents that were published.
This is a common scheme for handing a construction contract to “their own people”: leave the project documentation out of the tender. What legitimate builder would bid without seeing the project?
Whether the design and working documentation for the construction existed at all is a good question for law enforcement.
In any case, there are two sides: those who pay bribes and do shoddy repair work, and those who take bribes by squeezing competitors out of the tender and knowingly agreeing to poor-quality repairs. So far, it is not very noticeable that the Investigative Committee is running around trying to arrest the latter.
The full chain of companies responsible for repairing the collapsed barracks looks like this: Russian Defense Ministry (customer for the repairs) — FSUE Spetsstroyengineering under Spetsstroy of Russia (general contractor) — FSUE GUSST No. 9 under Spetsstroy of Russia (subcontractor) — RemExStroy LLC (sub-subcontractor) At the same time, let me remind you that under Article 706 of the Russian Civil Code: 3. The general contractor bears liability to the customer for the consequences of a subcontractor’s failure to perform or improper performance of its obligations in accordance with the rules of Paragraph 1 of Article 313 and Article 403 of this Code, and bears liability to the subcontractor for the customer’s failure to perform or improper performance of its obligations under the construction contract.
Next.
If you look closely at the itemized estimates, one thing becomes clear: the building could not have collapsed because of this kind of work.
The full list of all estimates, showing the scope of work, was published as part of the documentation (the “Estimates” folder) here.
The itemized estimates show that the builders in the barracks were supposed to plaster the walls, lay the flooring, and replace the windows. No reconstruction, replacement of load-bearing walls, or anything of that kind was planned. Buildings do not collapse because of plastering. That is why the first thing to check is the condition of the entire building—whether it was already dilapidated and unsafe.
It is quite possible that the main corruption scheme was as follows: 1) the barracks building was obviously unsafe, 2) money was allocated for major repairs, 3) instead of major repairs, only cosmetic work was done and the rest of the money was stolen, and 4) the unfortunate soldiers were moved into an unsafe building painted in cheerful new colors.
I can hardly say how many times ACF and RosPil have written about similar theft schemes in state construction contracts. No one pays any attention. Complaints are rejected, criminal investigations are not opened. And now 24 young lives have been sacrificed to corruption.