PYATIGORSK, February 20. The Federal Antimonopoly Service will inspect the Chechen Interior Ministry directorate after reports appeared online about widespread violations in the agency’s placement of government procurement orders. As a reminder, participants in the RosPil internet project recently accused Chechnya’s Interior Ministry of fraudulently spending federal budget funds. As Mikail Goigov, head of the department overseeing government bodies and public procurement at the regional office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service for the Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia, told RIA Novosti on Monday, the directorate had already undergone an inspection in 2011 following the involvement of the prosecutor’s office, but no violations were found. Earlier, in 2010, ministry employees were held administratively liable three times, though only in response to complaints that had been filed. “This year we will inspect them again in light of this information,” Goigov said. The Chechen Interior Ministry declined to comment, citing the questionable nature of the online publication. “The ministry has not reviewed the text posted on some private page on the Internet and, in general, does not comment on rumors and speculation appearing in the blogosphere,” a ministry representative said. http://www.rosbalt.ru/federal/2012/02/20/948094.html Lovely. So this post here, consisting entirely of official documents, is supposedly “rumors and speculation.”
The Chechen police have it pretty good: unaccountable federal money flows in from all over Russia, and all they have to do is write it off. And if anyone raises objections, it’s “we do not comment on speculation.” I’d bet the next version will be: “we do not comment on speculation spread by destructive forces aimed at breaking up Russia and directed by the intelligence services of certain countries.” We expect a better comment from the Chechen Interior Ministry, and we will get it. RosPil’s principle is to formalize the process: they can ignore “rumors and speculation” all they want, but sooner or later they will have to respond to our official letters. By the way, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Chechen Republic did in fact begin an inquiry in connection with the publication: The Prosecutor’s Office of the Chechen Republic conducted an inquiry into media reports 10.02.2012 In connection with a number of publications in the media and on the Internet alleging fraud by the Interior Ministry of the Chechen Republic, as reported by blogger Alexei Navalny, creator of the RosPil project, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Chechen Republic conducted a review of the claims made in those reports. http://prokrf.ru/42727 The statement is rather odd. The post went up on the evening of February 8, and by the 10th they were already announcing that they had conducted a review and that back in October, based on our complaints, some submission had supposedly been issued—something we had never heard about and whose text we had never seen. We have requested all the paperwork and will publish it. Allah gives the republic plenty of money, but for some reason Allah does not want to control how it is spent. So we’ll try to do a little of that ourselves.