Sobyanin, give back the stolen linden trees

Can a Russian official steal

something that, at this very moment,

is being scrutinized by a million people, almost

under a microscope? Absolutely. And that’s exactly what our

story today is about. It’s

a very small but very amusing

situation, and I think you’ll

enjoy it. The thing is, in central

Moscow, trees were planted after a

major reconstruction of Tverskaya Street

that, incidentally, cost the city budget

almost 1 billion rubles (about US$16 million at the time). It lasted

several months, caused massive

traffic jams, and sparked equally massive scandals. Everyone

was outraged by the reconstruction and

said it was outrageously expensive, very

pointless, and the Moscow mayor’s office replied to everyone:

Guys, just wait. We’re about to finish

everything up. Most importantly, wait until we

plant the trees, and then it’ll be so

beautiful that you’ll immediately forget all

your complaints. Just imagine the beauty—

what beauty!

[music]

Magnificent.

[music]

Magnificent. So, all of Moscow was waiting

for these trees to see what exactly

would come of it. They waited, the trees

were planted, and it’s not as if it suddenly became very

beautiful, but at the very least they do attract

attention. These aren’t some puny

shrubs, but mature, fully grown trees.

And of course, the first thing everyone became

very interested in was: how much does it cost to plant

one such tree? So what do you

think—how much? 30,000 rubles

50,000? Maybe 100,000 rubles? The internet

will quickly tell you that this kind of

service is available: you can order a large mature tree

for your country house (dacha),

they’ll deliver it and plant it, and the price range

runs from 10,000 to 60,000 rubles. And

now let’s look at how much the Moscow mayor’s office

paid for its trees. We take

the state contract, look at the total amount, look at

the number of trees—they’re different: oaks, lindens,

apple trees—but if we divide it out, we see that

the average price of one tree, including

planting and a year of maintenance,

comes to

260,000 rubles. Again: that’s for one tree. And

they even bought them in Germany, which is, separately,

a great irony in itself. We’re now even

importing trees into Russia from Germany.

But wait, that’s not even what my video is about.

If we’re so rich that we can

buy trees for 260,000 rubles each, then fine.

Though I should note that it looks rather

strange that at the same time

the state cannot pay for, for example,

children’s medical treatment, and their parents often, unfortunately,

have to raise money online.

I would simply like it if, since we’ve already

thrown that kind of money at trees, they

would at least end up where they’re supposed to be. But here

right here, in this very office, there was

a funny episode: we at the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) were discussing

the state contract for buying the trees, and during

the meeting I said, you know, surely

they’ll steal a couple of trees for

their dacha. And Lyuba Sobol, FBK’s lead expert on

public procurement, replied to me:

they won’t steal from this

project—there was such a scandal, so much

attention was focused on the reconstruction

of Tverskaya Street, the mayor personally handled

the issue. I’m sure every single tree

will be in place. After that, we decided that

there was only one way to settle our

argument: go there and count these very

expensive trees. According to the contract, on

Tverskaya Street there should be an exact

number: 111 trees—14 apple trees, 96 lindens,

and one oak. We waited until December, when

the contract’s execution period officially ended,

and went to check. We

arrived on Tverskaya to count all

the trees. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Here are seven more

trees. In total, on Tverskaya Street

we found 106 trees. So once again,

trees worth

1,285,000 rubles are not just missing—there isn’t even

any place to plant them. Unless, of course,

you start tearing up again

the granite sidewalk that was just laid for an unimaginable

amount of money. After all, this is

a mature tree, and to plant it

they use a special

huge pit like this. I’m saying all this in case

officials start lying that

they didn’t have time, or that the trees were there but

they were eaten by a bark beetle sent by the U.S. State Department.

The bark beetle has nothing to do with this. Most likely,

our lindens and apple trees bought in

Germany for 260,000 rubles apiece are growing

somewhere at Sobyanin’s dacha, and guests

coming to visit him are probably

surprised and say: Sergey Semyonovich,

you’ve got some great apple trees here. I don’t remember

seeing them before. And Sergey

Semyonovich replies to them:

thanks to our party, United Russia,

and our national leader Vladimir

Vladimirovich Putin, apple trees in Russia

have started growing much faster,

like bamboo in China. And not just apple trees,

comrades—our dachas have all grown by

two or three stories. That’s how well things are going. And

two more amusing facts about these trees:

some of them are simply substandard, even though

any Muscovite can check this.

Take a look at the thickness of this linden.

All the large-caliper lindens that were planted

on Tverskaya were supposed to have a trunk circumference of 60–70 cm

(about 24–28 inches), but as you can see, that’s not always

the case. And there’s also one symbolic tree there: the oak,

the oak planted near the building of the Central

of the telegraph in a special place, and let's

look at how the designers

described it to us: a signature tree

a red oak, selected especially for

this location. You know, it really makes you want

to drop everything and run to see

this iconic miracle oak, but you don't need to rush

the oak looks something like this. They also

clearly cut corners on it too. Or stole it. So

I won the bet, and once again we've

seen that there is no government contract

from which an official couldn't steal. Even if it is

a high-profile public contract, even if it is under

special supervision, even if it is examined

under a microscope, they will still

manage to pocket something. And here I would like

to address Moscow Mayor Sergei

Semyonovich Sobyanin. Dear Sergei

Semyonovich, of course I understand that all of this is

done so that the citizens of Russia

simply stop noticing that they are

being robbed every day. Turn on the TV and

there's war here, Banderites there (a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainian nationalists),

punishers here, ISIS advancing there, Obama, M

Merkel — and your Twitter is the same way.

Geopolitics and all that. But it just so happened

that despite such

important global matters, we still

noticed how you and your officials made the linden trees disappear

Please return them. We paid

for these trees, and we have an exact

list of what is missing: linden trees — four

apple tree — one. That means 5% was stolen

of all the trees that were supposed to

be planted, worth, I repeat, a total of

1,285,000 rubles (about US$14,000). That may be

small change to you, but not to us. If you took money

out of our pockets for this, then

please be so kind as to return the trees. I'll

tell you even more, dear Sergei

Semyonovich: after all, the reconstruction was carried out not

only on Tverskaya Street, but on dozens

of others as well, and trees at this insane price

were bought for all the streets. And if you weren't ashamed

to take them even from Moscow's main street,

then we are sure that on the more

outlying ones, things are even worse. So now

we will take all the contracts, gather

volunteers, walk around everywhere ourselves, and

count everything. There should be

2,875 trees worth almost 750 million

rubles (about US$8.2 million). We will count every single one, and for some reason

we have a feeling that from those 750 million

the officials

grabbed their share. If anyone wants to say something without

waiting for our public inspection,

as they say in such cases,

a sincere confession mitigates guilt.

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