I’d been waiting for December specifically so I could sum up my experiment on corruption risks. And today I’m happy to tell you about it—especially since the occasion is fitting: Anti-Corruption Day.
I wanted to find a government contract where, because of the public attention and the high risk involved, there should have been no way to steal anything—and then check whether they really hadn’t.
I found one. Take a look:
Few topics this summer got as much reaction on social media as the reconstruction and subsequent landscaping of central Moscow—especially Tverskaya Street.
I even ended up in a public exchange over it with Grigory Revzin, Sobyanin’s chief defender on this issue.
Revzin’s post: Moscow Beautification: We’re Ready to Endure the Whip, but You Can Choke on Your Gingerbread
My response: A Management Failure or the Mystery of Urbanism
As you may remember, City Hall said: don’t criticize us yet, wait until everything is finished—especially the landscaping. We’ll plant the trees, and it’ll all look divine.
Then they planted the trees, and the internet was flooded with posts from paid pro-Sobyanin bloggers: how amazing! how wonderful! the skeptics have been put to shame! we’ve never seen such beauty in our lives.
Especially touching were the posts in the vein of “our photographer visited Germany, where he captured the amazing places where these amazing trees are grown.” Sure he did—he got on the metro at Otradnoye station and somehow accidentally ended up in Germany, where he decided to take some pictures.
Here are some typical examples.
http://chistoprudov.livejournal.com/193597.html
http://macos.livejournal.com/1333457.html
http://maxkatz.livejournal.com/580289.html
http://gre4ark.livejournal.com/363352.html
There was a sea of this stuff—it’s hard even to imagine how much money was spent on all that paid propaganda.
So I thought: this is exactly the case I’m looking for.
A ton of attention, a ton of public reaction, a ton of op-eds.
For City Hall, it was a matter of principle to execute the tree supply contract flawlessly and shut up all the critics.
Any Muscovite can go look at these trees, count them, touch them. That means the risk of getting caught cheating goes up sharply.
And yet, based on experience, you can say with confidence: they’ll still steal something. Even if it’s only a little.
We even had an argument about it with Lyubov Sobol. At a meeting I said: I bet they’ll steal a few trees. Lyuba replied: no, they won’t steal here—they’ll be too afraid.
We waited until December, when the tree-planting contract was completed and City Hall reported that the landscaping on Tverskaya was finished,
and then we went to count the trees.
The result:
5 trees were stolen, worth 1,285,000 rubles (about US$20,000 at the time). That’s nearly 5% of all the trees they were supposed to plant.
In reality, much more was stolen, because a tree this large isn’t planted in some above-ground Sobyanin-style coffin planter
but in a special pit with reindeer lichen.
And for that, they dig a huge hole.
Right now (we looked very carefully), it’s impossible to plant the missing 5 trees unless, of course, you smash to pieces all the granite that was just laid.
Some of the trees are substandard. Their trunk diameter is smaller than what the contract required. And don’t rush to tell me, “you’re nitpicking”—each tree cost 260,000 rubles (about US$4,000 at the time). For that kind of money, I want genuinely mature trees.
The price of the trees is clearly inflated. 260,000 rubles apiece, even with “one year of maintenance” included, is an insane price.
The Miracle Oak is especially funny. According to the designers, the landscaping of Tverskaya has a focal point: a signature tree—the Red Oak by the Central Telegraph building.
We found it. This is what the “signature oak, specially selected for this location” looks like:
So on Anti-Corruption Day, I want to say that we have experimentally proved this: there is no public procurement contract from which a Russian official won’t steal—even when they know for certain inspectors will come check it.
And again, don’t rush to tell me: you’re still just nitpicking. Do you know how many of these trees were bought in total? 2,875 of them. For 750 million rubles (about US$11.7 million at the time). I don’t doubt for a second that on all the other streets they stole not 5%, but more. And that’s no small matter anymore, is it?
In the near future, we’ll try to gather volunteers and carry out a large public inspection: counting every single tree.
So, dear City Hall employees reading this post: you still have time to dash off, dig our trees up from your dachas (country houses), and plant them where they’re supposed to be.
Happy Anti-Corruption Day, everyone. You can do your part in this fight by supporting the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) here.