Attention. I am conducting an especially important socio-psycho-legal-civic experiment. If you don’t give a damn about any of this, keep scrolling. If you consider yourself a person with an active civic stance, click below the cut. The other day I got into an argument with a friend of mine. First about my court cases. And then more generally, about how much the internet public can be stirred up into a real fight against corruption. My position is that yes, it can, and most people are ready for it — they’re just scared to do it alone; they don’t know where to start. My opponent’s position: sure, people write to you saying “Thank you, we support you,” but no one will ever lift a finger if they have to do it in their own name rather than virtually. No one will take even the tiniest step to stop an outrageous act of corruption. Because, supposedly, we don’t have citizens here — we just have a population. And even among your own LiveJournal friends you won’t find a small handful of conscientious people, not even one and a half percent of your friends list. And you won’t find them in all of LiveJournal either. So in the end we agreed to run an experiment. And we set the terms. I currently have 1,545 friends. 1.5% is 23 people. We take a case of blatant, obvious theft that anyone can understand and see whether 23 people can be found among my friends and all of LiveJournal who are willing to take a simple, non-anonymous action to go after the crooks. Empty journals (with no posts) claiming to participate do not count. I do not count myself. I will not persuade anyone privately. Only through public posts. Time limit: one week. So. As our obvious case of blatant theft, we’re taking the tender for a section of Moscow’s Fourth Transport Ring. Everyone remembers it. The one that costs more than the Large Hadron Collider. For those who don’t, here’s a quick reminder: Moscow City Hall held a tender whose results mean that a stretch of road will be built with budget funds at a truly фантастической cost. Even the craziest megaprojects in the world are standing off to the side smoking nervously. And that’s despite the fact that labor costs in Russia are lower than in Europe. 66,063,000,000 (sixty-six billion sixty-three million) rubles for a small stretch. You can read the details at the end of this post, as well as here and especially here. That means more than SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS per kilometer. How much money will simply be stolen? A lot. Maybe 80%, maybe 8%. Either way, in absolute terms it’s a huge amount. And meanwhile we sit in traffic jams every day. Traffic jams happen because there are no roads. And there are no roads because the money got st…olen. An oversimplification, but everyone gets the point. So. You’re outraged. You’re fearless. And you have 90 seconds of free time. Then here’s the algorithm: Go here: http://www.kremlin.ru/mail/about.shtml (the website of the President of the Russian Federation) Click “write a letter” Fill in the fields with your personal information (in the “Subject of appeal” section, choose whatever fits) In the “text of the letter” field, copy and paste the text given at the very bottom. If you don’t like the text, feel free to add or remove anything as you see fit. (It will all appear unformatted there, but that’s not a problem.) Attention: IT DOES NOT MATTER WHETHER YOU LIVE IN MOSCOW OR NOT. You just need to be a citizen of the Russian Federation. Enter the address where you receive mail. Send the letter Update: at many people’s request, I’m clarifying that the topic “Fight against corruption” is under the section “Work of the Interior Ministry bodies.” It has the same legal force as if you wrote it on paper. The key point is de-anonymization. If you don’t provide your name, address, etc., the letter will go straight into the trash. You’ll receive a reply by post. This is not the most effective thing in the world. But what did you expect for 90 seconds? In any case, it is an official request. If you** decide to send the letter, please say so in the comments. Obviously there’s no way to verify it. We’ll have to rely on honesty. No need to write your first and last name in the comments. Another request to all the “active” ones: post calls to action in your cozy little journals. Add links or write similar appeals. The goal is maximum audience reach. As fearless fighters appear, I’ll publish their usernames. If you decide NOT to write, then p**lease at least explain why. This matters. You can choose from the following list: it’s all useless; I don’t want my name to be known; I’m very clever and cautious, and this feels like some kind of trap; I’m afraid to give my name and address — I’ll become a victim of Luzhkov’s mafia; you’re a scoundrel; I don’t take part in cheap campaign-style stunts; this is not actually a case of corruption; you’re a crook yourself, worse than Luzhkov; you’re just promoting yourself, and I don’t want any part of it; this is a hit job against Luzhkov, and he cares about Muscovites; I’m too elite to take part in loser flash mobs; I’m an elite lawyer, and you idiots don’t understand what you’re doing; I didn’t steal anything, leave me alone, it was all Lena. Y. Luzhkov; or write something of your own. This post will stay pinned at the top for a week. I’ll post updates as things progress. Let’s show the skeptics that Runet users are socially active enough to handle copy-paste! For my part, I promise that if 23 people are found, I will not drop the “Fourth Ring case,” and if necessary I’ll take up appeals against the responses and all the other related work. I believe we’ll get more than 23. Text of the letter: To the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Anatolyevich MedvedevDear Dmitry Anatolyevich, On May 30, an open auction was held on the Unified Trading Platform of the Moscow City Department for Competitive Policy for the right to conclude a state contract for the construction of the following project: “Section of the Fourth Transport Ring highway from Entuziastov Highway to Izmailovskoye Highway (Phase 2 launch complex).” The initial (maximum) contract price was 67,069,878,479 (sixty-seven billion sixty-nine million eight hundred seventy-eight thousand four hundred seventy-nine) rubles. The winner of the auction was the company Mostotrest, which offered a contract price of 66,063,000,000 (sixty-six billion sixty-three million) rubles. The results of the auction caused major public concern and were widely covered in the media. Most publications pointed to the unprecedentedly high cost of the contract and expressed doubts about whether the amount allocated for the construction was justified. Even the mayor of Moscow, in his appearance on November 17, 2008, on the main federal TV channel Channel One, in the program “Pozner,” stated that construction of the Fourth Transport Ring could have cost the Moscow budget six to eight times less. Even a rough comparison of the cost of this contract with modern analogues raises a number of questions about the objectivity of the cost estimate for construction of the “Second launch complex.” For example: the cost of construction work for a 20 km bridge over the Fehmarn Belt in the Baltic Sea, which will connect Hamburg and Copenhagen (scheduled for completion by 2018), is $6.2 billion, i.e. $310 million per kilometer (more than twice less than the price proposed by Mostotrest). the cost per kilometer of the world’s tallest transport bridge, the Millau Viaduct in France, included on lists of the twenty engineering wonders of the world, is about $230 million (more than three times less than the price proposed by Mostotrest). the cost of the road construction work for the Fourth Transport Ring is comparable to the cost of the bridge to be built between Yemen and Djibouti; however, that bridge includes a highway, a railway, and a gas pipeline. The bridge will cross the Red Sea and connect two continents — Asia and Africa. I fully realize that the comparison above is somewhat imperfect; nevertheless, the cost of the project to build the section of the Fourth Transport Ring from Entuziastov Highway to Sokolinaya Gora appears unjustifiably high. Even taking into account the demolition of buildings and structures, the relocation of utility infrastructure, the construction of a large number of road interchanges, and other expenses associated with this kind of work. I draw your attention to the fact that the Fourth Transport Ring is becoming the most expensive road in the world. Since the total length of the road will be 74 kilometers, if the above construction cost of 17.4 billion rubles per kilometer is maintained, the total cost of building the entire Fourth Ring will amount to about 1.3 trillion rubles. I believe that the factors leading to this unjustified inflation in construction costs may have included corruption and planned embezzlement on an especially large scale. I would note that major thefts had previously also been uncovered in road construction projects in Moscow, in particular during the construction of the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road) and the Third Transport Ring. In view of the above, I ask you to: Instruct the relevant divisions of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, and the Federal Antimonopoly Service to conduct a comprehensive review of the auction, including the economic justification for the lot’s starting price. Instruct the relevant bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation to investigate whether corrupt ties exist between officials (as well as owners) of Mostotrest and officials of the Moscow city government. In light of the serious changes in the Russian economy since the tender was held — namely, the sharp decline in construction costs (due to falling prices for building materials, labor, petroleum products, etc.) — instruct the relevant executive authorities of the Russian Federation to take measures to cancel the said auction and hold a new one in order to save budget funds. Given the particular public significance of this situation, I ask you to place the investigation under your personal supervision. Please send the response to this appeal in accordance with the procedure established by law.