Press Release, 23.12.2020

Photo: a screenshot of the main page of the investigation

The Chelyabinsk branch of the Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Centre has found purchases of luxury goods for gifts from the Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region Alexei Teksler. Yabloko’s Anti-Corruption Policy Centre asks the regional Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Main Control Department to check the facts of ineffectiveness of budget spending.

The Anti-Corruption Policy Centre lawyers analysed the execution of the government contracts for the provision of services for the provision of protocol events in 2019-2020, concluded between the Governor’s Administrative Department and the OOO PROTOKOL compnay (the company is 100% owned by the regional government). In the investigation published on the website of the Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko, the Anti-Corruption Policy Centre clearly showed what presents the Governor makes, to whom and how much they cost.

Annually the budget of the Chelyabinsk region spends about 10 million roubles on such gifts. There has already been placed a tender for a purchase for the provision of similar services in 2021. There is no doubt who will win it, and what the budget money will be spent on again, says Yaroslav Shcherbakov, head of the Chelyabinsk Anti-Corruption Policy Centre and Yabloko’s regional branch.

According to Shcherbakov, many presents are received by officials, and these elite gifts are paid from taxpayers’ money. Among the purchased gifts there are elite alcohol for 7,000 – 13,000 roubles per bottle, caviar dishes and other stone products worth up to 55,000 roubles a piece, household appliances and electronics, and blade weapons.

For two years 500,000 roubles were spent only on purchases expensive cognacs and whiskey. “Compared to these expenses, the purchases of gifts for ordinary citizens, for example, large families, are more than modest and barely exceed 30,000 roubles,” Shcherbakov says.

“The budget is large and there is a lot of room for fantasy, in addition to luxury goods, some exotic goods, for example, an air bubble tube worth 33,000 roubles or a retro style music centre worth 20,000 roubles, are also purchased,” Shcherbakov notes.

At the same time, both the law and the terms of state contracts establish that the cost of one gift cannot exceed 3,000 roubles. An official who received a gift more expensive than this amount is obliged to hand it over, and then, if he wishes to keep it, redeem its cost at the market price.

“However, now there is no information about whether officials are buying out the gifts of the Governor or simply keeping them for themselves,” Shcherbakov adds.

The head of the Chelyabinsk Anti-Corruption Policy Centre has already appealed to the Main Control Directorate for the Chelyabinsk Region, as well as to the regional Public Prosecutor’s Office, with a request to check the ineffectiveness of budget spending by the Governor.