MOSCOW, January 30 (Itar-Tass) — More than 9,000 officials incurred responsibility for violations in the sphere of public procurement in 2011, the Russian Prosecutor General’s office reported on Monday
“In 2011 alone, prosecutors identified and cut short 33.3 thousand violations on the procurement market, about 3 thousand legal violations were exposed in fulfilling the state defence order,” the supervisory authority said.
For violations in the state order placement prosecutors have made 6.8 thousand representations, challenged almost 2 thousand unlawful regulatory acts, and 9.3 thousand offenders have been brought to administrative and disciplinary responsibility at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office.
In addition, the Prosecutor General’s Office said, investigators of the RF Interior Ministry and the RF Investigative Committee (SK) are probing into more than 600 criminal cases on crimes in the public procurement sphere - fraud, negligence, abuse of authority.
“Facts of embezzlement and conclusion of the state and municipal contracts at overstated prices through various schemes, including by collusion of the participants and the use of ‘fly-by-night’ companies have been exposed,” the Prosecutor’s Office said. These cases have been investigated in Dagestan, the Komi Republic, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Rostov, Saratov regions and in other regions.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the number of violations related to the overestimation of the value and volume of work performed (such violations were detected in Dagestan, North Ossetia, the Kirov, Orenburg, Pskov and Chelyabinsk regions, Moscow and St. Petersburg) is “considerable.” Checks have also revealed the facts of artificial splitting of contracts for evading a tender (Rostov region), violation of the work performance schedule (Yaroslavl region) or a significant change in the conditions of concluded contracts (Chelyabinsk region), facts of acceptance of performed work on fictitious documents (Astrakhan region) and irregularities in the information support of the order placement (Kaliningrad region).
The Prosecutor General’s office said that prosecutors are constantly monitoring the lawfulness state at all stages of procurement activities with the use of online resources. “Particular attention is paid to the detection and suppression of facts or theft or misuse of budget funds, work dealing with corruption offences is actively carried out, significant efforts are focused on the neutralisation of threats to the security of the Russian Federation in the economic sphere,” the Prosecutor’s Office added.