Well, finally: Rosoboronpostavka's order for pistols for the Defense Ministry has been canceled over an unjustifiably high contract price Moscow, October 25. INTERFAX.RU — Rosoboronzakaz (Russia's federal defense procurement watchdog) has opened an administrative case over the purchase of Austrian pistols for the Russian Defense Ministry and has canceled the application submitted by the Federal Agency for the Supply of Arms, Military Special Equipment, and Materiel (Rosoboronpostavka). The plan was to purchase 24 Austrian-made Glock-26 pistols for a total of 4,586,400 rubles, at an initial (maximum) price of 191,100 rubles per unit, or about $7,000, and 318 Glock-17 pistols for a total of 66,846,780 rubles, at an initial (maximum) price of 210,210 rubles per unit*. Source These are the same "golden pistols" uncovered by Andrei Mishchenkov from RosPil (an anti-corruption project focused on public procurement), which led to this amusing exchange with Rogozin. By the way, we still do not see any sign that the order has actually been canceled, even though the media are reporting that it has.
The application is active and still in force. What's more, changes were made to it today extending the application deadline to November 14. You can check for yourself. Well, I suppose they will cancel it after all. Of course, we are pleased that we forced the Defense Ministry and Rosoboronpostavka to treat taxpayers' money more carefully, and in this case prevented about 40 million rubles from being stolen. But the framing of this as merely "an administrative offense" is absolutely not acceptable to us. The ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) maintains that officials at Rosoboronpostavka did not quadruple the price of the pistols out of stupidity, but did so deliberately in order to steal money. And we believe this was a corrupt arrangement specifically with Promtekhnologii, which I wrote about in a post that so enraged Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin. These statements here:
https://twitter.com/Rogozin/status/391394641968648192 is false. The same Andrei Mishchenkov established (see the end of the post) that all previously purchased Glock pistols were bought specifically from Promtekhnologii. Not only sporting pistols, but combat ones as well. You can check that yourself too: http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/common_info/show?notificationId=6636795 http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/common_info/show?notificationId=5473620 http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/common_info/show?notificationId=6396228 http://zakupki.gov.ru/pgz/public/action/orders/info/common_info/show?notificationId=4494822 (update on the combat/sporting issue) They were purchased at prices comparable to market rates: from 48,000 to 56,000 rubles apiece, depending on the model and configuration. And then all of a sudden — 210,000 rubles apiece. So: The only supplier of combat Glock pistols is Promtekhnologii. Rosoboronpostavka has already bought pistols from them and knows exactly what they cost. The new procurement is plainly corrupt; the price was inflated deliberately. The Anti-Corruption Foundation will send new complaints to the Investigative Committee, the FSB, and the Defense Ministry. Don't try to fob us off with talk of an "administrative offense." This is dangerous corruption and embezzlement on an especially large scale, carried out by high-ranking officials with access to state secrets. Let me repeat: if they are stealing 300% on pistols, can these people really be trusted to procure submarines and missiles, where there isn't even a real market price to compare against? It's simple — just add 100% to any price tag so they can kick it back to you later. There are ample grounds here for both a criminal investigation and personnel consequences, and we will insist on both. PS If you think RosPil and the ACF are doing important and useful work, then money is the best gift (an even better one is verified information about some kind of fraud in government procurement that you send us, but if you don't have information, then money): rubles.