By Vestnik Kavkaza
“Do you know why End of Days didn’t happen in December 2012? The Audit Chamber has checked and found out: money allocated for realization of this event was stolen,” Sergei Stepashin, Head of the Audit Chamber of the Russian Federation, has joked recently. The results of the year he summed up relying on real figures.
Last year the Audit Chamber conducted 370 check-ups. 130 out of them were analytical, because the audit of the efficiency is particularly difficult.
33 of them were initiated on the request of Member of Parliament or senators, 2 on the request of the president.
47 checks, very important, were conducted together with the law-enforcement agencies. So it means we did not simply send our materials to them, but involved the representative of the FSB or Ministry of Interior in our revision groups that went to inspect concrete objects.
16 checks were held together with the regional audit chamber and 6 together with auditing bodies of the other states.
The Audit Chamber sent 340 reports - this is our main document that should be implemented within a month. If it is not implemented, the Chamber raises a question about the responsibility of a particular official.
The number of administrative charges imposed on our reports reached 716, while in 2011 there were only 500.
About 20 bureaucrats on different levels were dismissed. On our report the governments of Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia were completely dismissed.
The Chamber sent 150 materials to the General Persecutor. And for the first time none of them was returned. On the basis of 80 out of 150 criminal cases were started.
The Audit Chamber revealed the violation of law in the financial sphere for the amount of 700 billion rubles. 83% of this are the violation of the budget legislation, more than 100 billion come from the sphere of state procurement. “And we inspected only specific cases in this sphere, only 10-15% of the organizations dealing with it. You can imagine how much violation happens every year in this sphere,” Stepashin stated.
The Chamber revealed budget misuse for 11 billion rubles, it involves criminal responsibility with the mandatory return of the money in the budget. 4 billion has already been returned and I hope that the remaining 7 billion will also be brought back.
The Audit Chamber itself costs 2 billion, this amount is spent on our salaries, business trips, bonuses. “So it can be said that we are a self-supporting organization that even brings some profit,” Stepashin said.
The most important checks had a resonance, it is the Defense Ministry, and not only Oboronservis but also the Main department for the provision of the troops. “This organization is now being cleaned by Sergei Shoigu. We found out that 93% of works on the contracts between this department and the Defense Ministry were outsourced to some dubious organizations, and that the sum of the financial violations last year was 10.7 billion rubles. Oboronservis has violations for 6 billion rubles as you know. The law-enforcement agencies are now investigating. We have sent all the additional materials to the General Persecutor and the Investigation Committee. By the way, the first information about the Oboronservis came from us. We held a check there one and a half years ago and we sent the appropriate information to the Military Persecutor.”
In the system of the Ministry of Interior we found violations for 5.4 billion rubles in the case of Unified information-communication system.
The state procurement has 100 billion rubles violation, as I said. This is one of the most painful topics Violations have been found also during the preparation for the APEC-2012. It is indeed a very serious project, beneficial for the Far East. “It is the first big project implemented in the last 20 years. Sochi Olympics will be the second one. However, we revealed that out of the 67 objects for the summit only 23 were completed. The rest is not there. Only 3000 students out of planned 30000 study today at Russky island. Although most of them still go to Vladivostok because there is a bridge. We put a question in front of the Ministry for regional development that if the project is not completed by February we will raise a question about the qualification of the activity of the Ministry of regional development. I have informed Slyunayev about it.
We also found out that the Far East office of the Ministry of regional development instead of controlling its resources hired a special organization "Pioner" and gave it 700 million rubles. We believe that it is budget misuse. 93 million out of them are not even in the contract. So they simply gave the money and that was it. The deputy minister Panov was arrested.
There is a sum of 15 billion that everyone mentions. Many believe that this money was simply stolen. I would like to comment on it. I mentioned serious violations. These 15 billion refer to the two hotels that were not built, the drama theater and an aquarium. This is where this sum comes from. These objects were supposed to be launched back in summber. It is a serious financial violation. And concrete people have to answer for it. Responsible people were dismissed. A criminal case was started on the initiative of the governor. The saddest fact is that the money allocated for these hotels were invested in the bank deposits for a year and together with the law enforcement agencies we are trying to find out who earned on this.”
To be continued
