Press Release, 29.03.2018

Photo from the web-site of OOO Khartia company. Garbage is been sorted manually.

Sergei Mitrokhin, head of Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre, demanded from the Office of the Moscow Mayor to report on sorting and processing of garbage in the city. Contractors working on state contracts must build sorting stations and garbage processing points until the end of 2019. However, there has been no information on the construction yet.

In 2012-2014 Moscow concluded state contracts on garbage collection for 15 years. Nine contracts cost 142 billion roubles. In February 2014, Forbes published an article about redistribution of the garbage business in Moscow. Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre also wrote about the corruption-prone contracts.

However, the lawyers of the Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Centre also draw public attention to another important condition of the contracts, in addition to garbage pickup and burial.

“Eight contracts worth 117 billion roubles contain requirements to the state contractors to build garbage sorting stations and garbage collection points. This is done for separate garbage collection. But there is virtually no information about the construction of such facilities. Therefore, we asked the Moscow Mayor’s Office for details on how these contracts are being implemented. We suspect that the requirements for processing are not met, and in fact all garbage is transported to the landfills in the Moscow region or burned,” said Alexey Karnaukhov, deputy head of the Center and lawyer.

In 2016, Greenpeace also criticised the system of sorting garbage in Moscow for its inefficiency.

“The garbage disaster that erupted in the suburbs of Moscow results from different things. One of them is the lack of an infrastructure for separate collection of garbage. It is senseless to build garbage processing plants without it. But in fact money was allocated for these purposes, and it was quite an amount of money. We are interested in where the money is gone. Another question that worries us is: where they were going or are going to construct garbage sorting facilities now? How safe are these places for Muscovites living nearby? After all, creation of sorting stations is planned is every district. Knowing the situation in [the cities in Moscow region such as] Kuchino, Yadrovo, Kolomna, Troitsk, we are afraid of similar consequences throughout Moscow,” Sergei Mitrokhin says.

Investigation of Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre demonstrated that only OOO Khartia company out of the total of five state contractors, published information on its web-site about a sorting complex. Judging by the descriptions and photos, the garbage is sorted manually. The company does not specify how recycling of sorted garbage takes place.  The company is owned by Igor Chaika, who is the son of Public Prosecutor General Yury Chaika. This was reported in 2015 by the Anti-Corruption Fund and the RBC newspaper.

The Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Centre requested an address list of sorting stations and garbage collection points, as well as information about the construction phase and the owners of the facilities. Under the Russian law, the Moscow Mayor’s Office is obliged to provide the requested information. Yabloko’s lawyers insist, that if the contracts are not executed, the state officials and officials of the Mayor’s Office should be held accountable.