What kind of person do you have to be to profit from the coronavirus right now? Or rather: what kind of person do you have to be to loudly declare, WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANYONE TO PROFIT FROM PANIC AND HYSTERIA, while quietly profiting from that same panic and hysteria yourself.
Answer: you have to be a United Russia party member and an official in the Moscow mayor’s office.
You’ve probably seen the mayor’s office’s proud announcement in the news recently: we bought 200 million rubles’ worth of masks. Now there will be enough for everyone!
Let me tell you: yes, they really did make that purchase, classifying it as emergency procurement so they could avoid a competitive tender, and they stole at least half of that amount.
The coronavirus is raging around the world. Medical masks have become a hot commodity and may become — and in some places already have become — scarce. Especially if hostile foreign forces succeed in spreading panic in Russia over a possible epidemic. We didn’t even know such foreign forces existed, but the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service) reported this to President Putin.
Fortunately, the state will protect us. First, it will arrest all the panic-mongers, and second, it will prevent price increases for medical masks. Not only the government but Putin himself is demanding an end to profiteering from mask sales and calling for licenses to be revoked immediately from pharmacies that overcharge for these products.
That’s what they tell us on television. But real life is explained by Moscow Mayor Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin. What is an epidemic for ordinary people is a chance to make some extra money for a member of United Russia.
On February 28, the Moscow Healthcare Department’s Drug Supply Center bought 200 million rubles’ worth of medical masks. There were different kinds of masks: surgical, adult, and children’s. In the video, I’m holding a children’s mask branded “Bereginya.” It’s very important that every child has a mask. Thank you, Sergei Semyonovich — now there will be enough for all the city’s children.
The Central Tuberculosis Research Institute bought the exact same masks for 3.70 rubles each two weeks earlier.
Sobyanin’s talented officials probably got an even better price. After all, this was a huge wholesale order — 2,500 packs of 50 each, meaning 125,000 “Bereginya” children’s masks alone.
And for that, we should especially thank the mayor’s office, Putin, and United Russia — because ordinary people will be able to save money. The supplier (KIT LLC) sells these masks retail for 207 rubles per pack, with 50 masks in a pack. That’s already just over 4 rubles apiece.
But Putin demanded that mask prices not be allowed to rise. So we have no doubt that Sobyanin bought them wholesale for 3.70 rubles or less. And through the network of social pharmacies, he’ll sell them at the same price. Or maybe a little higher. But say, less than 5 rubles each. So we’ll save money!
And now, just the numbers — and once you look at them, you’ll understand what disgusting crooks are in power here.
These masks, which retail for 207 rubles per pack, are being bought wholesale by Sobyanin’s Drug Supply Center from the same supplier, KIT LLC, for 472 rubles. That is stated plainly in the public procurement documents.
They bought them in bulk at twice the price that the same supplier charges at retail. And they bought them without a tender from a sole supplier, because it was an “emergency.”
The purchased goods are then shipped to state-run social pharmacies (“Capital Pharmacies”). We weren’t too lazy to go there and buy a few of these masks ourselves. They simply don’t sell full packs. The saleswoman rubs her hands with solution and counts out a single mask for us at 12 rubles each. A pack — if you were allowed to buy one — would cost the customer 600 rubles.
And it’s the same with all the masks. We used the children’s ones as an example, but all the others were purchased in exactly the same way.
In fact, even worse.
For example, the standard three-layer medical mask under the “Rutex” brand. Three weeks earlier — with the coronavirus already here, with shortages already happening — the same Central Tuberculosis Research Institute bought them for 1.34 rubles each. Sobyanin, meanwhile, somehow managed to make an emergency no-bid purchase at 7.15 rubles apiece.
Five times more expensive. And in the social pharmacy, it’s sold for 9 rubles already.
That’s how they spent the entire 200 million.
So here’s what it comes to. While Putin, the FSB, Mishustin, and Golikova feed us nonsense about foreign countries wanting to spread panic, while the antitrust service threatens commercial pharmacies with fines for overpricing masks, and Putin goes so far as to demand that they effectively be ruined, Moscow’s mayor’s office is openly stealing by buying masks at wildly inflated prices. And then it sells them in city social pharmacies at 4 to 6 times the price to people with disabilities, veterans, and everyone else.
In light of all this, I have a question and a proposal.
My question to Putin and Sobyanin: do you have any conscience at all?
And my proposal: Never. Never. Never vote for representatives of the United Russia party. These people are the worst of all. They will steal always and from everything. You need to vote against them. Campaign against them. Register on the Smart Voting website.
Thieves in officials’ chairs are killing our country faster than any virus.