Here’s the situation, my friends. Apparently, we all have to chip in to buy an Audi A8 D4 LWB Tip quattro 4.0 TFSI for 5 million rubles for Gadzhi Makhachev, head of the Republic of Dagestan’s representative office in Moscow.
Gadzhi Makhachev himself is known to us for the fact that he a) is constantly wearing one hell of a papakha (a traditional Caucasian fur hat)
b) In 1967, he was convicted under Article 145.2 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (robbery) and sentenced to 3 years in prison. In 1980, he was convicted under Articles 108.1 (intentional grievous bodily harm), 112.1 (intentional minor bodily harm), and 218.1 (illegal carrying, possession, acquisition, manufacture, or sale of weapons, ammunition, or explosives) of the RSFSR Criminal Code, and sentenced to 6 years in prison c) celebrated his son’s wedding on such a lavish scale that he shocked even battle-hardened American diplomats and also (like a true Muslim) had thousands of bottles of Beluga Export vodka flown in from the Urals (“Recommended with black caviar”). d) is very fond of Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party. So aren’t these arguments enough for us to buy Gadzhi Makhachev a car worth 5 million rubles? A thug, a hooligan. Loves luxury and worships Putin. Those are the ingredients of success. RosPil will of course challenge this procurement on formal grounds, but much more importantly, back in September 2011 RosPil’s lawyers drafted a bill to restrict procurements involving the transfer into ownership, possession, and/or use of a car priced above 2 million rubles. We publicly appealed to all parties with factions in the State Duma, asking them to support it. Official letters were sent to faction leaders. As a result, the bill was supported by all factions except United Russia. With various amendments, the bill was submitted for consideration in three versions: two were introduced by members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (1, 2), and one more by Gennady Gudkov. The bill remained under consideration for a little over a year, and in September 2102 the профильный committee (the Committee on Land Relations and Construction) ultimately recommended rejecting it. At the plenary session on October 24, the bill was, naturally, rejected. We are grateful to all the deputies who took an active part in the fate of our bill. But in our further work, we focused on one of the versions (introduced by CPRF members S.P. Obukhov, V.G. Solovyov, and V.F. Rashkin), since the version they introduced was the closest to the original draft prepared by RosPil’s lawyers. The official position of the профильный committee was that, overall, they approved of the idea of the bill, but had a number of objections to its specific implementation and said it needed further work. Basically: it would be awkward for them to refuse us outright, but they couldn’t agree either. RosPil’s lawyers decided to play along: they took the objections into account, added the necessary clarifications, and “reworked” the text of the bill. For example, committee representatives were very concerned that adopting the bill would lead to an “increase in time costs and labor expenditures” for the Government, which would be responsible for issuing permission to procure expensive cars. We explained, however, that the proposed changes to the rules for vehicle procurement were based on a general prohibition on purchasing cars costing more than 2 million rubles. Permission to procure such vehicles was предусмотрено as an exceptional, extraordinary measure to be used only in cases of objective necessity, and therefore would not require significant time or labor from the staff of the Government of the Russian Federation. And so on. You can read more about this and everything else in the explanatory note to the bill. In short, we would like to report that we have prepared a new version of the bill, which was submitted for consideration on November 28 by CPRF deputy S.P. Obukhov and other deputies. The text of the submitted bill and all other documents can be found in the bill file. On behalf of RosPil, we will once again appeal to the leaders of all factions to support our bill. We have no doubt that A Just Russia, the CPRF, and the LDPR will support it again. Let’s see what United Russia says this time. PS If Makhachev’s car is purchased rather than the tender being canceled, we’ll make a killer DMP leaflet. If you’ve got ideas on the subject, post them in the comments.