Unfortunately, it was not possible to stop officials from Yekaterinburg City Hall from buying Lexus cars for 8.8 million rubles. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) sided with them. City administration employees showed up at the commission hearing where RosPil's complaint was being considered. Their argument for why these "servants of the people" absolutely, desperately need a super-fast Lexus was so magnificent that I decided it deserved a separate post: At today’s meeting of the regional FAS commission, City Hall tried to justify itself on all these points. It turned out, for example, that a top speed of 250 km/h (155 mph) is needed so they can make it in time to various emergency incidents. “Alexander Yakob is the chairman of the emergency situations commission. Therefore, he needs to be able to travel promptly to incident sites. Besides, speed is an essential characteristic of a car,” a representative of the administration said. Why such a fast car is needed by City Duma chairman Porunov, who does not travel to emergency scenes, remained unknown. http://politsovet.ru/40761-meriyu-ekaterinburga-ostavili-pri-leksusah.html You can just picture this very Yakob racing through Yekaterinburg at 250 km/h (155 mph) on his way to a fire.
Sticking his head out the window and screaming at the top of his lungs over the wind, “Faster, faster, it’s on fire!”