An interesting case that RosPil is working on: an auction in Yekaterinburg for the sale of federal property—five non-residential premises that are federally designated cultural heritage sites. This is a bit outside our usual scope: it is not about how the state spends money on new property or services, but about the prices at which it sells what it already owns. So: The announcement of the sale of cultural heritage properties in central Yekaterinburg was published back in November of last year in the magazine State Property:
Full text of the auction notices. A simple but effective trick was used here: the provisions of the notice did not comply with the law and were written by the seller specifically to make rigging easier later on. Citing "failure to comply with the requirements of the notice" as the reason, the property seller (Federal State Unitary Enterprise FT-Center) rejected most applicants and barred them from participating in the auctions. For example, in the auction for one of the cultural heritage properties—a non-residential premises with an area of 112.1 sq. m.—out of 20 applicants, the seller rejected 13 and admitted only 7 Roughly the same pattern of refusals can be seen for the other lots as well. Here are links to the official records—see for yourself: 1 2 3 4 In the end, all five auctions were held only among the approved participants (read: front companies), and the properties were sold at the minimum price, far below market value. And after that, everything followed the usual well-rehearsed scheme: on the very same day, the seller and the winner signed the purchase agreement for the premises, and then the new owner immediately filed documents to register their resale. A nice little business: "I know how to win auctions for the sale of state property." You can read more about the auction situation in an article by Novy Region. Interestingly, the auction took place in December 2011, and already in January 2012, those same commission members were caught taking commercial bribes and are now in custody, according to a statement on the website of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. Applicants who were denied participation in the auctions began appealing the commission’s unlawful actions to the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia and turned to us at RosPil. Together, we have already gone through several hearings at the Moscow office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, and new hearings are scheduled for August 22. In addition, claims have been filed with the Moscow Arbitrazh Court (commercial court) (at the defendant’s location) seeking to invalidate the auctions and the purchase agreements for all five lots. As an example, here is one of the statements of claim We will push to have this rigged scheme overturned, and at the same time we are exploring a new area for RosPil: the sale of state property. It is a complete mess, and no one is dealing with it.