Another achievement by United Russia, which has been diligently blocking in the State Duma RosPil’s bill banning officials from buying cars costing more than 2 million rubles. The head of the Pension Fund in the Chechen Republic wants to cruise around the vast expanses of his exceedingly prosperous region “looking like a boss.”
To make that happen, all of us are apparently supposed to chip in and buy the brazen freeloader named Akhmadov Mokhmad-Emi Isaevich a car. For 4 million rubles.
http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/common_info/show?notificationId=4550818 A look at the technical specifications quickly makes clear exactly what kind of car is supposedly needed to care for Chechen pensioners:
It is a Mercedes GL 500 4Matic
Mokhmad-Emi Isaevich certainly has expensive tastes. In a car like that, there’s no shame in: tearing around Grozny, towering importantly above the white VAZ-2106s of the local poor, accompanying Police General Kadyrov’s modest motorcade, firing into the air through the sunroof, dancing the lezginka (a traditional Caucasian dance) next to the gleaming hood, taking the place of honor in the parking lot by the largest mosque in Europe, driving to the ancestral village of Bamburoy-Goyty-Chu to show fellow villagers that “Mokhmad-Emi has made it in life and is completely not guilty.” and doing the other things that fill the schedules of Chechen officials. I write about things like this often, and you’d think I’d be used to it by now, but every such procurement sends me into a rage. The Russian deadbeat officials who love riding around in style at our expense infuriate me enough, but all these parasitic freeloaders whose entire activity consists of squeezing more subsidies out of the rest of the country infuriate me a hundred times more. The sheer audacity is unimaginable. And they are not even embarrassed. It’s obvious why.
Daddy himself loves the good life and expensive toys, so he will certainly forgive them for something as trivial as Mercedeses and Lexuses bought with public money. RosPil, of course, appealed the order on formal grounds. We will also file a complaint over the inefficient and improper use of budget funds. And we will write to the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation asking them to explain why Chechen pensioners—and Russian taxpayers who fund the pension system—need a Mercedes GL 500 4Matic. We will publish the response.