Press Release, 30.05.2017

The Moscow hurricane of 29 May killed 16 people and about 100 Muscovites are in hospitals.

During the thunderstorm of 29 May many people complained that they had not been warned. Thus, many reported that text messages on the emergency situation did not come to their telephones. A spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations said that “information is being given – all who want it, get it.” Such an approach was considered unacceptable by Sergei Mitrokhin and YABLOKO Anti-Corruption Policy Centre.

YABLOKO Anti-Corruption Policy Centre on the order of Sergei Mitrokhin, head of the Centre and member of the Federal Political Committee of the party, has calculated that the Moscow authorities and the Moscow department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations spent about 128.6 million roubles on warning citizens about emergency situations in 2016. Mitrokhin has already applied to the Chief Controlling Department of Moscow demanding to check the effectiveness of the Ministry’s spending and has sent a request to the Investigative Committee to verify the actions of officials stating that they fall under Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Negligence”.

“The Ministry purchased from the Moscow Telecommunication Corporation kits of “amplifying, sound-emitting, channel-forming, wire and radio communications” for 80 million roubles. It remains unclear why the equipment was not used in a true emergency situation. Taking into account the customers, the Ministry of Emergency Situations which is a profile department of the Moscow City Administration, there are questions about the effectiveness of spending and proper performance of their official duties,” Alexei Karnaukhov, deputy head of the Centre, noted.

An additional amount of 20.4 million roubles was spent on equipment and services for “modernisation of a satellite video broadcasting complex and a mobile public information complex and their integration with a comprehensive system of emergency notification of the population about the threat of occurrence or occurrence of emergencies in the territory of Moscow.” Another 5 million roubles were spent on the “works on development a comprehensive system of alerting Moscow population of emergiencies”.

“We have a sad experience in identifying direct responsibility of officials for the poor preparation of the security systems for natural disasters. Thus, in 2012, we found that the cause of mass deaths [during the flood] in the Krasnodar Territory was criminal negligence of certain officials,” Sergei Mitrokhin said. “Last year we found a direct connection between the death of children in Karelia [when they did boating during a storm] and corruption in the arrangement of sub-contracts for the organisation of children’s vactions. All this makes us today pay close attention to the work of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in prevention causalities due to the storm expected in Moscow on 29 May”.

“In 2012, the Ministry reported on the effectiveness of the emergency notification system in Moscow. That time the system included, among other things, 1,745 street loudspeakers. Why this system was not involved during the thunderstorm in Moscow on 29 May is unclear,” Mitrokhin added.