On December 20, 2016, St. Petersburg’s Construction Committee signed a state contract to complete the Zenit Arena (more precisely, to improve the area around the stadium).
State contract worth 952 million rubles
The contract was awarded without competitive bidding, supposedly to deal with the consequences of an emergency situation. There were no tsunamis in St. Petersburg in December 2016, and the outrageous greed of city officials is not recognized as an emergency under federal law.
According to ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation), this state contract, concluded in circumvention of mandatory bidding procedures, was declared illegal by the St. Petersburg office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service on January 27, 2017.
After that, ACF filed a complaint with the Federal Antimonopoly Service, seeking a review of whether competition had been unlawfully restricted in this case and asking that the officials involved be held accountable.
We have now received a response from the St. Petersburg office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service stating that an antitrust case has been opened based on our complaint. Officials from St. Petersburg’s Construction Committee face disqualification for up to three years (Part 3, Article 14.32 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses).
More specifically, the person who should be disqualified is A.Yu. Shishkin, deputy chairman of the Construction Committee, who signed the 1 billion ruble state contract on behalf of the St. Petersburg administration. His photo and biography are here.
Attached is the order scheduling the hearing of the antitrust case concerning the Zenit Arena for April 27, 2017.
We are convinced that this and other violations in the construction of the Zenit Arena should lead not only—or even primarily—to antitrust cases, but to criminal ones. We will pursue that as well.