On Saturday, August 11, Vladivostok “ceremonially opened” the bridge across Golden Horn Bay and the Novy settlement–De-Friz–Sedanka–Patrokl road with the De-Friz–Sedanka bridge. As a reminder, in June of this year, a retaining wall collapsed on a section of this very highway.
At the time, Medvedev ordered officials to “find and punish those responsible for the destruction of the 29-billion-ruble road”. A criminal case was opened over the collapse, and Medvedev said that not only the builders but also the designers should be held responsible. As a result, Andrei Razgonov, head of the Primorsky Krai Road Construction Department, was dismissed. RosPil looked into how this wonderful Department actually conducts its tenders. We can say that, taking advantage of the situation (FASTER, FASTER, THE APEC SUMMIT IS COMING SOON, AND MEDVEDEV WANTS TO CUT THE RIBBON), this Department is handing contracts to its “own” firms without the slightest embarrassment. We assume they explain it the way construction officials usually do: only this company is reliable and can do everything quickly and with quality. And the quick, high-quality work from a reliable company is exactly what we see in the photo above: the reliable company simply “forgot” to install drainage, and the road collapsed. So:
What you see above are decisions issued following unscheduled inspections of procurements related specifically to the design and construction of this highway in Primorsky Krai and the road from Patrokl to the Golden Horn bridge. These inspections were carried out in response to RosPil’s complaints. We are now awaiting decisions on other similar contracts, where everything also reeks of obvious graft. The Department’s current procurements are also quite interesting. For example, on June 15 the Road Department posted procurement No. 0120200000112000036: a request for quotations for “Inspection and acceptance testing of the bridge crossing over Golden Horn Bay in Vladivostok on the highway connecting the federal M-60 Ussuri highway, Khabarovsk–Vladivostok, with Russky Island.” The initial (maximum) price was 7,515,349 rubles. A number of violations of current law were identified in the documentation. First and foremost, the customer had unlawfully chosen the procurement method.
The Primorsky Krai Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) found our complaint well-founded and issued an order to cancel the request for quotations. <
On July 6, the Road Department posted procurement No. 0120200000112000050 : an auction for “Engineering and scientific support during work on the project ‘Construction of the bridge crossing over Golden Horn Bay in the city of Vladivostok on the highway connecting the federal M-60 Ussuri highway, Khabarovsk–Vladivostok, with Russky Island.’” The initial (maximum) price was 2,999,998 rubles. Shortly before that, RosPil had successfully challenged a request for quotations with an identical subject matter. So on July 6, the customer reposted the procurement for this work, this time in the form of an auction and with a different contract price. By the way, take a look at the price. What a cute little trick.
Under Federal Law No. 94-FZ, auctions with a contract price below 3 million rubles are subject to special shortened deadlines (7 days instead of 20). That is why they are “adjusting” the price. Moreover, the auction documentation states that the work must be completed by August 3.
At the same time, the auction results were finalized on July 23
and published on July 24
. Under Federal Law No. 94-FZ (Article 41.12, Part 9), a contract may be concluded no earlier than 10 days after the protocol summarizing the results of an open electronic auction is posted on the official website. A bit of simple arithmetic shows that, if any time at all was allotted for carrying out the work, the maximum was just one day. The tender documentation also contained a formal violation: it lacked the legally required justification for the initial contract price:
Following an unscheduled inspection conducted in response to our complaint, an order was issued to remedy the violations:
On July 10, 2012, the Primorsky Krai Road Department posted procurement No. 0120200000112000052: an auction for geodetic support during work on the project “Construction of the bridge crossing over Golden Horn Bay in the city of Vladivostok on the highway connecting the federal M-60 Ussuri highway, Khabarovsk–Vladivostok, with Russky Island.” The initial (maximum) contract price was 2,999,999 rubles. Here, the previous story repeated itself: the contract price, the work deadlines, and the lack of a proper justification for the contract price as a formal violation. Once again, “almost 3 million,” allowing the application period to be shortened; once again, August 3 as the completion date. But the appeal story repeated itself too. Our complaint was found well-founded. An order was issued to remedy the violations:
. So, in all three highly questionable procurements, the Primorsky Krai FAS office (following our complaints and appeals) issued orders to cancel the auction protocols and remedy the violations (and in the first case, to cancel the unlawful request for quotations altogether). And this is where things get really interesting (I hope you’ve had the patience to read this far). According to information on the official public procurement website, in all three cases the Primorsky Krai Road Construction Department, in violation of all the antimonopoly authority’s orders, just went ahead and signed the contracts. "Inspection and acceptance testing of the bridge crossing over Golden Horn Bay
Note: the contract was signed on August 9.
And in the documentation, which remains in force,
the work was supposed to be completed by August 3.
Here, the contract was concluded at the maximum price—the same 2,999,999 rubles—with the sole participant, Bridge Bureau LLC.
Incidentally, the company’s website says that its areas of activity include that very road whose section “collapsed.”
To sum up what is happening: Two months before the “ceremonial opening,” Medvedev is outraged over the “collapsed road” on which tens of billions of rubles were spent. The head of the Road Department, which had placed contracts for this road with numerous violations, is dismissed with great fanfare. And then, already under the new leadership (acting director I.N. Peterimov), the Department continues handing contracts to its own firms, and if it gets caught, it spits on FAS orders and simply signs the contracts anyway. In this connection, RosPil has prepared appeals (1 2, 3) to the Primorsky Krai FAS office.
The antimonopoly service should go to court to compel the customer to comply with the order and remedy the violations. Unfortunately, from our experience, we know they do this with extreme reluctance. Let’s hope that this time they show some principle. Then again, maybe there is no need to bother: most likely, everything built by these reliable little firms will fall apart soon enough—but only after the APEC Summit—so apparently that means nothing is wrong. Vladivostok is far away; from Moscow, collapsed roads are out of sight.