On behalf of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, I’d like to tell the Russian government to go to hell with their “commercial secrecy.”
I already wrote about how the government refused to publish the concession agreement with the company that was given the right to collect money from truck drivers. Most people — and even most journalists — simply don’t understand this and refer to the government order available online as the “concession agreement.”
But under the law, there must be a separate document setting out all the details.
We believe that such a document cannot possibly be a commercial secret — or any other kind of secret — whether by law or by common sense. There is no competition here; this is a monopoly system, and one of the parties is a government body. What secrets could there possibly be, and from whom?
On top of that, the agreement cannot be secret because 1) it was concluded without a tender, 2) it has caused enormous public outrage, and 3) it has led to strikes and protest actions.
Publishing this document is in the public interest.
Despite all the efforts of the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation), the agreement was provided neither to us nor to our media outlet, *Leviathan*. “Commercial secrecy,” they say.
But some good person sent it to us through the Black Box, in response to our appeal. The Anti-Corruption Foundation acts in the public interest, so we are publishing these documents:
These are lengthy documents and require careful reading by a professional.
Even our preliminary review once again showed that, in addition to the fact that the concession agreement itself was concluded without a tender — in direct violation of the Law “On Concession Agreements” and competition law — the agreement also contains a provision stating that no concession fee is to be paid under it. In other words, Rotenberg pays nothing to the state, which violates the essential terms of a concession agreement required by law. Instead, the contract establishes a Grantor’s Fee — that is, a payment by the state — in the amount of 10.61 billion rubles, excluding taxes. From the agreement, it remains unclear where this exact figure came from; there is no economic justification for it. The agreement also contains a so-called “salvator clause,” according to which, if the contract is suddenly declared void, the parties undertake to conclude a new agreement on the closest possible terms. On January 27, in the Moscow Commercial Court, we will seek to have the concession agreement declared void because it was concluded without a tender.
We continue to urge everyone to fight for the abolition of Platon as a harmful and corrupt system. Here is my short video address on the subject.
I also want to remind you about our campaign: we announced a contest for the best sticker for trucks against Platon/Rotenberg/United Russia/Putin, and we want at least 100,000 trucks on the roads to carry these stickers. Join in and take part.
A few more words about the “Black Box”, since it has come up.
Hundreds of people send all kinds of corruption stories there, and people often ask me: why doesn’t everything get acted on? That’s not really the case: we review everything carefully, use some of it, and systematize and archive some of it for later use. It’s true that we’ve published no more than 1% of what has been sent in, but it’s important to remember that 1) we simply do not have the resources to investigate every case, and 2) a lot of information comes in that is obviously true, but that we still cannot confirm. For example, a message saying “such-and-such official has such-and-such passport and lives at such-and-such address” may match our understanding of that official 100%, but a great deal of work is still needed to find the relevant documents.
The Black Box is designed to be genuinely anonymous, so communication is one-way. You can write to us, but we cannot write back to you. That is why there are many things requiring clarification that we simply cannot clarify — please keep this in mind when you write to us.
And returning to Platon: send us through the Black Box everything you know about the corrupt underbelly of this system and its organizers. I, for one, am convinced that the younger Rotenberg simply stole at least 50% of the 27 billion-ruble Gazprombank loan for creating Platon — there is no way it should have cost 27 billion rubles, the system is not that complex, and the way it functions so poorly makes it obvious that the real expenses were far lower.
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