A couple of weeks ago, V.V. Putin loudly expressed outrage, saying that “road prices come from who knows where, and no one understands how they are calculated.” I strongly suggest he take a look at the situation surrounding the construction of a road interchange in Yekaterinburg costing 6.5 billion rubles. And while I’m at it, let me once again update everyone on RosPil’s long, tedious, but important fight against the crooks in Yekaterinburg City Hall and the government of Sverdlovsk Region. A reminder of the story: On December 1, 2010, the municipal institution “Capital Construction” announced a municipal procurement auction for the right to conclude a turnkey municipal contract for the construction of the following facility: “Transport interchange at the intersection of the high-speed ring road along Bazovy Lane with Komsomolskaya Street and Sibirsky Trakt in Yekaterinburg,” at: 1 2 Contract price: 6,560,703,250 rubles. The date deserves special attention: starting January 1, a number of changes were introduced, including changes to procurement procedures. Clearly, the customer was determined to get this done before January 1 at any cost. After January 1, the customer was required to hold the auction electronically on designated electronic platforms rather than in paper form, as before, and also to post the procurement on the official public procurement website Briefly, on the substance of the auction: The subject of the auction is turnkey construction. That is why the documentation originally listed the work as “design and construction.” Accordingly, the customer required a certificate authorizing work on the preparation of design documentation. No design documentation was attached. However, the customer later made changes. They removed the term “design” from the description of the work, added clauses requiring the development of working documentation, and attached the design and cost-estimate documentation. Thus, it is obvious that the customer had all the design documentation from the very beginning. Judging by the documents, no design work or preparation of design documentation is required. All that is needed is to develop the working documentation and build the interchange. That made the scale of the scam clear as well. Design work for a project worth 6.5 billion rubles would itself cost hundreds of millions of rubles. And if these guys have 650 million rubles sloshing around in the estimate either way (very roughly speaking, the design costs about 10% of the total estimate), then you can imagine the scale of the padding and inflated quantities. These crooks of a customer, despite the fact that the project somehow “appeared out of nowhere,” still list the subject of the auction as turnkey construction and still require an SRO certificate for design work. The restriction of competition is obvious. On top of that, the customer is committing a number of other violations of Federal Law No. 94-FZ, in particular by reserving in the draft contract the right to change the scope of work at its own discretion. Now, as for the history of our work on this auction: (a lot of text and a lot of tedium) In short, we filed our first complaint back in March. But it turned out that before us, another bidder had already filed a complaint about the customer’s actions. That complaint was found justified at the March 11 hearing, and the customer was issued directives which, in the opinion of the FAS commission (Federal Antimonopoly Service), were complied with on time. At the same time, FAS representatives considered our complaint to be similar, and for that reason it was not reviewed on the merits. However, we had to file a second complaint against the customer, in particular because the FAS review failed to identify the violation consisting in the fact that, according to the documentation, the customer had the right to change the scope of work however it saw fit. On April 13, a decision was issued on our second complaint. It was found justified. Moreover, the new FAS commission established that the customer had in fact failed to comply with the March 11 directive (the one issued on the complaint filed by the other bidder):
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In the end, the customer did make changes to the auction documentation, complying with the FAS directive issued in response to our complaint:
But at the same time, the customer failed to comply with other directives issued under the FAS commission’s decisions of March 11 and April 13, and also failed to post the changes to the documentation on the official website. So we filed yet another complaint.
The FAS commission confirmed the violations
Our complaint was found justified, and the case materials were forwarded to law enforcement agencies
Returning to the substance of the auction, here is the bottom line: The customer has all the design documentation. What it needs is to develop the working documentation and then actually build. And yet, instead, it describes the subject of the auction in a way that effectively also implies design work, and introduces a requirement for a certificate authorizing work on the preparation of design documentation, even though no such work needs to be performed. In essence, the subject of the auction does not match what actually needs to be done. There is serious reason to doubt that this was done in haste or through negligence. We have repeatedly appealed to the FAS. We have two justified complaints (plus one more that was effectively justified but was not reviewed on the merits). The FAS issues directives. The customer gradually changes some things in accordance with them, but not others. The dates for the auction to build this interchange, which the city genuinely needs, keep being pushed back. Most recently, they were postponed to August. Given the customer’s “efficiency,” there is no guarantee the auction will happen even in August. And the interchange really is needed. At the end of the summer, when things really start to smell like trouble, the crooks in the Yekaterinburg administration and the Sverdlovsk regional government will no doubt start screeching: Navalny and RosPil are stopping us from building the interchange! The city is choking on traffic jams! Sabotage! Disaster! This whole infernal circus, under the slogan “twist it, spin it, skim off some money,” is unfolding right before the eyes of Governor Misharin, regional and city deputies, the local police, the FSB (Federal Security Service), the presidential envoy, and so on. So the obvious question arises: how long is this going to continue? It’s perfectly clear that these guys decided to take a hefty bite out of that tasty 6.5 billion. That’s why they are manipulating and twisting the tender documentation every way they can. And all of it at the cost of missed deadlines. Once again, loudly and clearly, RosPil asks Misharin, a member of the United Russia party and governor of Sverdlovsk Region,
and Alexander Edmundovich Yakob, head of the Yekaterinburg city administration and a member of the United Russia party,
— What are you waiting for, guys?
You’re being paid to keep an eye on things like this.
The obvious decision is to cancel this procurement.
After that, put out a proper, normal tender for the construction of the interchange, but this time with the correct subject of the auction and proper documentation available to everyone, without any illegal restrictions.
That is the simplest, fastest, and most lawful path. If that had been done after RosPil’s first complaint, the bidding would already be over and construction would have begun.
If both Misharin and Yakob continue to ignore what is happening, we will regard that as complicity in the planned theft of budget funds.
I hope the residents of Yekatdeal with the bosses under wartime laws appreciaerinburg will understand what is happening and express their attitude toward the authorities in the December elections.