Someone dropped a fresh link in the comments to a government procurement listing remarkable for its sheer brazenness. The Finance Minister of the Republic of Dagestan, Abdusamad Mustafayevich Gamidov, has decided to buy himself a car.
For — attention — EIGHT AND A HALF MILLION RUBLES!
(source) Caucasian pride apparently does not allow Abdusamad Mustafayevich to travel the roads of Makhachkala in anything less than a modest AUDI A8L with the highest level of armor protection.
Abdusamad Mustafayevich likes the high life. The only problem is that he lives it at other people’s expense. Dagestan’s budget is 75% made up of transfers from the federal budget (that is the official figure; if you look at total spending, the share is even higher). So that fancy armored Audi for Dagestan’s finance minister is being bought collectively by all Russian taxpayers. Personally, I do not understand why I should be paying for Gamidov’s luxurious lifestyle.
I am sure that most presidents of countries around the world travel in more modest cars. Why should a minister from an impoverished republic be riding in something like this? The whole republic is doing sweet nothing. Massive unemployment. A pile of real problems. Even decent people who genuinely want to work honestly cannot do so. The leadership of Dagestan is forever begging Moscow for money and blackmailing it with the threat of rising terrorism, yet at the same time it throws away 8.5 million rubles on an ordinary minister — and there are plenty of them hanging around there. If there really are security problems and an armored vehicle is absolutely necessary, then Abdusamad Mustafayevich should do what befits an official from a poor region: buy a UAZ (a rugged Russian utility vehicle) and screw steel plates onto it or something. Instead, apparently, the conflict between the clans of Mamedkhan Whatsisname and Zelimkhan So-and-so over the cash flows from bootleg vodka has intensified, and so now it has become dangerous. And because of that, we are supposed to buy limousines for local officials. Are the residents of Ryazan and Yekaterinburg fighting clan wars in Makhachkala? If not, why are they paying for it? And besides, if Dagestan is so dangerous, then why are we now spending 450 billion rubles on the "development of North Caucasus resorts"? Are we going to buy every tourist an armored car too? Or is the armored car needed in this case to transport the money skimmed off from federal funds? There are no formal grounds for canceling this tender. In theory, Dagestani officials can buy themselves even Bentleys. Supposedly, things like this are meant to be regulated by the federal authorities — the much-vaunted “power vertical” (Russia’s centralized chain of command). We shall see what happens. For now, though, I suggest spreading the word. Why have such a ride if nobody knows about it, eh?