I need a little help from residents of Krasnodar Krai, or from anyone vacationing in the city of Sochi and the surrounding area. You may remember that last year, in one of the posts about RosPil’s current work, I wrote about an interesting procurement in Krasnodar Krai: 24 million rubles for the development of the “Sochi Trail”. Money was stolen there (146%): to make sure only a “preferred” bidder could enter the auction, the customer set an impossible deadline for the work from the outset. The auction winner was supposed to, within 5 days, prepare and get approved by the customer a huge stack of documents: a trail network plan, a route passport, a development and informational-content plan for the route taking into account current trends in tourist and ecological complexes, a route service concept taking into account environmental, conservation, aesthetic, and safety requirements, draft designs for the trail infrastructure, a site plan (scale 1:5000 and smaller), an ecological trail plan (scale 1:1000 or 1:500), carry out dendrological studies, and so on. And in the remaining 5 days, they were supposed to actually develop and improve the entire area according to those plans and sketches, install small architectural forms, lay the trail, put in benches, clear fallen trees, etc. And all this despite the fact that
Obviously, it was impossible to complete this work within 10 days. RosPil filed a complaint about this procurement and even attached an expert opinion from a former employee of the architecture and urban planning department of a municipal authority—a specialist in site improvement. Despite that, the Krasnodar office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) (crooks and accomplices of all the thieves in Kuban) ruled the complaint unfounded, claiming that we had not proven the deadline was unrealistic. What happened next? Only one company showed up for the auction—OOO "Inzhzashchita"—which was unanimously admitted by all members of the customer’s auction commission and won the tender at the maximum price. It was with this LLC that the customer, the Federal State Institution “Sochi National Park,” was supposed to sign the contract. That contract, in turn, had to be published on the official website, including in the procurement record. The contract was signed, but instead of posting it on the official site, the customer uploaded a link to a completely different contract—some gymnasium in Barnaul buying drinking water. Very clever, supposedly.
http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/events_journal/show?notificationId=1324438
http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/printForm?type=CONTRACT_INFO&id=163116 So it turned out there was no real contract posted. And that is already a violation of the law, carrying administrative liability under Article 19.7.4 of the Code of Administrative Offenses: “Failure to provide information, or untimely provision by a customer’s official of information on the conclusion of a contract or on its amendment, performance, or termination to the federal executive authority, executive authority of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation, or local self-government body authorized to maintain registers of contracts concluded as a result of public procurement, where submission of such information is mandatory under the legislation of the Russian Federation on procurement for the supply of goods, performance of work, or provision of services for state and municipal needs, as well as the submission of knowingly false information, shall entail an administrative fine for officials in the amount of twenty thousand rubles.” Because of this, we filed a complaint with the antimonopoly service: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13ysZ_wd8eKX9o8y0n0WDfbP2smV4tzAopd3bnKeVlo0/edit. The antimonopoly officials conducted an inspection, found a violation, and issued an order to remedy it (decision and order).
And only on January 13, 2012 (even though the work was supposed to have been completed back in September) did the customer finally publish the contract, while simultaneously stating that the contract had been fulfilled and the money had been paid out.
Now to the work itself. And this is the most interesting part, because agents of the Forces of Good told us there’s absolutely no sign of any work at all. Obviously, it couldn’t have been done in 10 days.
But we hoped they would at least do it eventually. There’s only one way to check. If you’re somewhere nearby, want some fresh air, and wouldn’t mind helping catch a couple of crooks, please take a walk through Sochi National Park (http://sochinp.ru/sochi/) and see whether they actually laid this trail and improved the area as required by the auction’s technical specifications, and whether there are now scenic viewpoints, recreation areas, and the rest of what they were planning to build with our money. A description of the work, along with a trail layout map, can be downloaded here. Everything is described in sufficient detail—you can simply print it out, go there, and compare.
Please send photos, comments, and anything else you can gather about this trail to the RosPil email address: rospil2011@gmail.com. We’ll publish it all, and if the work hasn’t been done, we’ll write to the prosecutor’s office, the Investigative Committee, and everyone else who is supposedly fighting corruption here.