Alexei Navalny’s speech at a meeting of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) commission on public procurement

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

And it is wonderful that the FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service) organized this

discussion, because, well, at least

in my experience, 90% of all discussions

of public procurement or of Federal Law No. 94

specifically boil down to two things.

First, how terrible Law No. 94 is

for those supposedly innovative projects

and young scientists who cannot buy

reagents; and second, how terrible everything is for

those who supposedly cannot, through electronic auctions,

procure both pastries and road interchanges.

It seems to me

that Mr. Shakun quite accurately, very

characteristically, described this situation:

you are proposing that some soulless

robot paint a picture

by Raphael. I am absolutely certain that no one

is asking builders to paint a Raphael

masterpiece.

In reality, there is nothing uniquely, extraordinarily

or mega-special about what our builders do in 99%

of cases. Everything that is built in

Russia—yes, they built the Ostankino Tower once—

consists of entirely standard facilities

that are built in all countries and have been

built continuously in Russia as well for many, many years.

When the question comes up—ah, the bridge to Russky Island

which has already been mentioned today—and then

we use the bridge to Russky Island to explain

why we need to build, without a competitive tender,

a school in some settlement, and this is a very

important point: we need to understand that all

our construction, even these complex

interchanges, bridges, and tunnels, all of it

exists in a fully competitive

environment. If it is being built in large

regions near major cities with populations over one million,

there are always several companies

capable of building it. This is a completely

competitive environment. As for certain unique

facilities that cost a great deal—ports,

and so on—we have international

competition. So I think it is very

important, within the framework of this discussion,

to establish that construction—yes, it is important—but

there is nothing especially extraordinary or outside

the bounds of competition here, and in practice

nothing of that kind is ever built in Russia.

The second thing that we must also

recognize and say out loud is that, historically, between

our authorities and builders there have developed

certain special relationships. I am not even

talking about corrupt relationships right now;

it is simply a historical fact. Yes, they have

been friends for a long time, often belong to

the same parties, go on all sorts of outings together,

and so on. In other words, they simply have this

whole set of relationships. We have

a huge number of projects that are simply

built without designs, without

permits: we urgently need to build

a school for Semyon Semyonovich; we know him well,

let him go to the site and start building,

and then later we will hold the tender

and prepare the design documentation, and so

on. Therefore, these

relationships are important, but still

they are a subjective matter. Yet it is precisely this

that is the main driver

behind this entire discussion. I would like

to very briefly, since the topic

of today’s discussion is proposals

for developing legislation in the field of

construction, dwell on four

points that I would, so to speak, propose

for discussion and possibly for some

legislative solutions.

First: which builders actually meet deadlines? None.

Which builders stay within schedule? None. Which

builders stay within budget? None.

Which builders handle everything, including proper

documentation, correctly? None. They

all build more or less the same way, and the quality

of construction is the same for everyone.

Why, then, does a situation arise

where some are constantly given a pass, while

for others the supervisory authorities

practically never leave the construction

site? It seems to me it would be quite

right to strengthen in legislation a certain

obligation

on the part of the customer to fight for taxpayers’ money.

Because when the customer

says,

“Well, the contractor failed to do something, so we had

to pay them,” I ask: why are you paying them at all?

Who is forcing you to pay them?

Go to court—

take it to court. That means at the procurement stage

you should have broken everything down into stages,

monitored those stages. You have every right—go to

court, go to

law enforcement. In practice, this

does not happen. It is impossible to make them do it.

We keep trying

to make this happen, but it does not happen.

Second, what is happening now in procurement is

some kind of

confusion specifically over the subject matter of the contract.

Mikhail Yevrayev has already spoken about this: where do we have

design work, and where do we actually have

construction itself? Let me give

an example. One of the projects that

the RosPil project is dealing with is an interchange in

Yekaterinburg costing 6 billion rubles (about 6 billion RUB).

they put the design and

the construction out to tender and began looking into it during

the commission meeting; there was discussion about them

there is

test

if a project is such a gigantic

construction project, it in itself costs hundreds

of millions of rubles, but where do they have those hundreds

of millions of rubles floating around? Is there

working documentation? No. Is there working documentation?

A design? No design. This is, of course, a matter

for professional debate: is it necessary

to tender the design separately and separately

the construction? From my point of view,

it really should be done, but in

any case it must be described with absolute

clarity what is included. What does

turnkey construction mean, so that there are no

double

interpretations

which, strictly speaking, is what these projects are about

third, related to this, is the documentation from before

because in practice, with major construction—yes,

some interchange is being built, and the first

pre-design proposals for it were made back during

the Olympics, then there were some

surveys, then other surveys

then a third round; finding all of this

is impossible if you are not affiliated with

the official directly involved. A builder

will never find any of this data

what utility

networks are there, whether someone has already done work there

publication of absolutely everything that has been

developed on this subject, on the subject of

that specific construction project before the contract is awarded

fourth, something very important that no one

talks about: documentation afterward. Have you ever

tried, in open

sources, to find an already concluded

state contract or the documentation? For some reason

the system is set up so that it is impossible. We tried

to do a project: we simply took and found

roads that had been tendered. Well,

let's say, rather dubiously, with

a sole supplier and no price reduction

and tried to monitor what

they had actually built. But

the documentation is not there; it is impossible to obtain

All these concluded contracts should

be available, I don't know, on the Treasury website or on the

electronic platforms, but it is impossible to get them. You can

run experiments: in 90% of cases it

won't work. So what kind of oversight

public or otherwise, including from the side of

competitors, can we even talk about? Therefore, although

this is, generally speaking, already provided for now, but

unfortunately, there is no real effect

These are the proposals. If I may, one minute

for the complaints about our FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service)

our wonderful agency—we can do it in a brief

response format, you can note it down and then

reply. I was saying that we should

compel our authorities to go to court

if

under a contract the customer fails to do something

or the contractor does. The FAS has an instruction

under which the FAS goes to court if

a contract is concluded

in circumvention of an order, and if it is worth more than

100 million rubles. We have

such a case in one region; it

happened in May. In May we wrote to you

a letter: please file suit. To this

day this has not happened. So it turns out we

have to run around and ask the FAS leadership

to file suit. Well, that looks strange

because if we impose such

high demands on some

contractors, then at the very least the FAS, as I

fully understand, has too few staff and

far too much work, but nevertheless this is

a major problem. But right now, excuse me,

we have to invent some hellish scheme just to

sue you in order to force you

to carry out your own order. We will

conduct an internal review, that's all. We have

an internal review if not

So, second: in the antimonopoly

service there is rather loose handling

when it comes to complaints and appeals. The practice is such

that if an employee wants to review it, he

treats our letter as a complaint; if he does not

want to review it—he has a lot to do there

or he is simply lazy—he treats it as a general appeal. Five

days or

it seems to be regulated, but in

practice difficulties arise here

The penultimate point is oversight of

territorial bodies. When our

complaint about, say, the Smolensk regional FAS office

is sent to that same Smolensk FAS office—well, that is

let's say, rather strange. And

last, but not least, there are all sorts of

small procedural issues. It is wonderful

it is simply great that there exists in the

antimonopoly service this quasi-

judicial procedure. It is not judicial, but

it is adversarial. But the procedure is undermined by everything. Do you know

what the hardest thing in the world is?

It is getting through by phone to the antimonopoly service

No one has managed it, depending on which

department, at least all the ones

we call. I don't know, maybe there are

some secret ones that actually have people

answering the phones, but most often it is impossible

to do. People wait there for hours

miss things, and so on. I understand that

these are implementation-level excesses, but nevertheless

they nevertheless this

adversarial in practice. Thank you.

a great deal of attention. Thank you very much.

So, I would like to propose, in conclusion,

to give the floor to three more colleagues. Yes.

one of those colleagues will be me. I’ll take number 5.