As promised, we sent an inquiry to the Ministry of Economic Development about the mass trip by employees of the ministry to Cannes. To an exhibition. On official business travel. Here is the reply:
I have a nagging feeling something is off. Forbes correspondent Maria Abakumova insists that 86 people from the Ministry of Economic Development were on the exhibition participants list. The ministry itself says there were only 3. It is hard to be off by 83 people. Is there any explanation for this strange discrepancy? Theoretically, one could assume that ministry officials were taken there by commercial companies that paid for their travel and accommodation. But that would basically be corruption and skipping work. I do not understand. Hey, Maria Abakumova, we are waiting for your comments. Update. Here is a letter from Maria Abakumova: Alexei, good afternoon. Sorry for replying here, but I do not have a public account on LiveJournal, and anonymous comments are not allowed in your journal. As for the officials, the situation was actually a bit different. At the exhibition, the Ministry of Economic Development organized the “Russian Federation” stand, paid for it, spending, I think, several million rubles, and so on. Various federal subjects (regions of Russia) presented projects at the stand — Vologda Region, Ulyanovsk Region, Khabarovsk Territory, Chechnya — so many regional officials registered as part of the Ministry of Economic Development delegation, since it was the holder of the stand. If you add them all up, you get the figure of 86 that I wrote about. For me, it was not essential whether they were federal or regional officials; what mattered was that they were not businesspeople. Although even from the Ministry of Economic Development itself, the number registered was, as people already pointed out to you in the comments, more than 3.
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