How Corruption Works in Russia

One of the dumbest things I

keep hearing all the time is that

it is very difficult to uncover cases of corruption.

And that the Anti-Corruption Foundation

is supposedly being fed such

cases by the security services. Otherwise, how could an ordinary

public organization possibly

expose so many people?

That is complete nonsense. Let me use

one specific example to explain once again

how corruption works in Russia.

Look, one of the most corrupt

areas of our lives is, of course,

public procurement. Every year,

30 trillion rubles of our money are spent on it.

It is hard even to imagine that figure, but

it is even harder to imagine that no less than 6

trillion rubles are simply stolen every

year. And that is not even my estimate. Dmitry Medvedev himself,

when he was serving as

president, said that every

fifth ruble in public procurement is stolen.

And just the other day, even the antimonopoly

service said that 95% of state company procurements

are also a sham, which means

the corruption there is enormous as well.

Within public procurement, there is a separate

black hole. It is

defense procurement. Colossal sums

are spent on it. In 2015 alone, nearly 2

trillion rubles. The amount keeps growing. And on

television, of course, they tell you

that this greatly strengthens the power of

the Russian armed forces, but in reality, in my

view, half the money is simply stolen there,

taking advantage of the secrecy. Now

let us look at a specific example of

how corruption works in practice. There is

Putin’s chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin, about whom

we have already made a major video,

which you can watch. He is famous, among

other things, for becoming practically the

main contractor for the Ministry of

Defense. He supplies fuel,

handles utilities and housing services in military towns,

and so on. Recently, he has received Defense Ministry contracts

worth 180 billion rubles.

So naturally, we are keeping an eye on him

and will be talking about him more than once. But

for now, let us turn our attention to the Bryansk

region. There, the Ministry of Defense decided

to build a new, ultra-modern military

town on the border with Ukraine. A great deal of money

was allocated for it, nearly 1.5

billion rubles, and the contract for

building the military town was put out to tender,

as required by law. Naturally,

there was no shortage of those eager to compete for this juicy

prize, and several

different companies said they wanted

to compete for this lot.

One of those companies happens to belong

to Putin’s chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Then,

as required by law, the tender documentation

was published, and in it

everyone could see that it had been drawn up

in such a way that victory would

be guaranteed to go to Prigozhin.

The violation was so blatant that the

Federal Antimonopoly Service was simply

forced to cancel the tender

altogether. And the 1.5 billion ruble prize

went to no one. So we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation grabbed

some popcorn and began watching with interest

to see how the situation would

develop next, how they would all

twist and squirm their way out of it. If you think

that the crooks who were preparing to hand

the contract to Prigozhin used some kind of

sophisticated schemes or clever combinations

to make sure no one would detect them, then you

are very much mistaken. In practice,

Putin’s chef and his partners in the

Ministry of Defense said: “To hell with

these tenders. We will

just build it anyway.” And we ourselves would not

have believed it if someone had not

filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office about unauthorized

construction at that site. As a result,

we can now see

an official prosecutor’s submission and

an arbitration court ruling, from which

it follows directly that LLC Megaline is the very

Prigozhin company that simply

started construction work without a contract

and without permits. Large-scale earthworks

and construction work were underway, a construction headquarters

had been set up, along with a workers’ camp

for the laborers, several pits had been dug,

and so on. So, once again, look at

what happened, in plain

human language. Crooked state contracting officials

and crooked contractors agreed

to carve up 15 billion rubles on the construction of

the military town. Their tender was disrupted and

canceled. Their response was: “Well, go

to hell. We will give this contract

to whoever we want. And tomorrow he will

start building without any permits,

approvals, or tenders. We will just throw

15 billion at him, and that is that.” And I can

guarantee 100 percent that out of those one and a half

billion rubles for the construction overall,

at least 500 million rubles will first move

into black briefcases, and then

those black briefcases will be carried

to various high offices. High offices indeed, because

well,

just think about it: could such a large-scale illegal

construction project really be carried out

inside a military town?

There is controlled access there, it is land belonging to the Ministry of

Defense, and construction equipment cannot

enter without passes. Of course,

the leadership of the Ministry of Defense knows about this construction,

the minister knows, the FSB (Russia’s security service) knows,

and, as we can see, the military prosecutor’s office knows as well,

although, to be fair, it complained only about

the work without construction documentation, rather than

at the very essence of this corrupt deal.

And now it is November 2016,

and we at the Anti-Corruption Foundation,

will, of course, now file a criminal complaint,

because this is a very real

corrupt conspiracy. And all of these people

could, well, simply be thrown in jail

as soon as tomorrow. And after our complaints,

there will be a huge scandal. But I assure you,

everything will remain exactly as it is. And the one to finish building

this military housing complex will be none other than

Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s chef. And the money

for the work will all be paid to him, and everything

will stay exactly as it is. Why? Because

the little suitcases of cash, delivered to

various offices, will do their job at

146%. We will simply be able, in real

time, to watch how they

steal these 500 million rubles from the budget, and

no one will do anything. That is how

corruption in Russia works. There is no need

to look very hard for it. It is completely

out in the open. It relies on blatant

violations of the law. This corruption does not

feel the slightest bit ashamed that we can see

it in all its naked

glory. And none of us needs

to be an intelligence agent to spend 3

days poring over open-source

information and probably find, I don’t

know, a dozen cases in which officials

steal hundreds of millions of rubles from

the budget. And the main problem in our country

is not that it is hard for law enforcement agencies

to catch crooks red-handed, but rather that

simply no one wants to do

it. More than that, everyone is forbidden from doing

it, and any investigator or

operative knows perfectly well: if you start digging into

something you are not supposed to investigate, you yourself

will quickly end up behind bars. So

it is better to keep your head down and hope that you too

will get a little something from that same

suitcase full of cash. Subscribe

to our channel. This is where the truth is told.