| The Ministry of Defense skillfully camouflages income from commercial activities The monetary dispute between the Ministry of Defense and the Accounts Chamber crossed the line after which the country's legislative body was forced to intervene in the discord. The State Duma heard a report from the auditor of the Accounts Chamber, Alexander Piskunov. Perhaps the issue will be raised at a plenary meeting. The Vremya Novostei newspaper obtained a report from the Accounting Chamber on the results of an audit of the commercial activities of the Ministry of Defense in 2001-2003.
The Ministry of Defense, it turns out, lives not only with budget money, but also actively earns money from the so-called “permitted types of activities.” The sale of released movable and immovable property, weapons and military equipment (WME), property “from stock”, training of foreigners in military universities, sale of products for the disposal of submarines, aircraft and missiles brings the Ministry of Defense about 10 billion rubles annually. This is an amount that can be tracked in the accounts of the Main Financial and Economic Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. God only knows how much was spent in regiments and divisions on the ground. The legislation makes it possible not to transfer the money earned in this way to the state’s income, but to direct it “to support the activities of the armed forces and solve the social problems of military personnel.” But quite often these considerable sums are spent irrationally, or even simply do not reach their destination.
The report of the Accounts Chamber allows you to verify this. It shows that auditors and inspectors checked ten main and central departments of the Ministry of Defense and were surprised to find that all of these serious organizations did not store the money they earned in the federal treasury, as they should have, but in current accounts in commercial banks “and other credit organizations.” ”, which are not vested with the right to control the correct expenditure of funds. And the funds are considerable. The Central Administration of Material Resources and Foreign Economic Affairs alone passed about a billion rubles through the Interregional Investment Bank. But the Air Force decided not to transfer it to the centralized fund of the Ministry of Defense and spent 362 million rubles on itself. Military intelligence officers kept the currency in the bank account of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rosoboronexport, which illegally held the money for a long time. As a result, lost profits amounted to about 250 thousand rubles. Banks simply did not pay interest to some military organizations. In turn, the Ministry of Defense did not always transfer value added tax to the budget - this resulted in about 120 million rubles.
The military department still cannot receive money (and is not trying very hard) for the 13 Su-24MK fighters sold to Algeria back in 2000. The Algerians paid the money, but the military could not agree on the price of aircraft with the Novosibirsk Aviation Production Association, which modernized the aircraft. The Ministry of Defense cannot collect the debt for the training of foreign specialists in the amount of $273 million. Every now and then the inspection report talks about untimely received, underreceived, or not received square meters of housing for the military at all. The bill runs into hundreds of thousands of rubles. Moreover, the apartments were paid for, although often they paid twice as much per square meter compared to the market price.
Almost 5 billion rubles have been spent over these years. The lion's share went to the restoration and repair of weapons and military equipment, as well as to the construction or purchase of housing. But the most curious thing in this whole story is how exactly the money earned by the military was spent. 18 million rubles intended for equipment repairs were spent on installing a fence for the General Staff building on Arbat. On the other hand, maybe this is correct. Judge for yourself. The Main Armored Directorate, for example, repaired vehicles, the cost of repairing which often amounted to 80% of the price of a new vehicle. A similar, but much larger-scale absurdity occurred with 750 Federal State Unitary Enterprises of the Ministry of Defense: with expenses for modernization of fixed assets exceeding 100 million rubles. income amounted to only about 4 million rubles.
Transport aviators decided to build a dispensary for pilots in Sochi. And although the right to construct such facilities is granted only to the Minister of Defense or his first deputy, the Air Force Commander-in-Chief himself made the decision to build a 2-story building with 18 rooms. However, the commander of military transport aviation (“why are we worse?”) decides to build a building with three floors. The price immediately jumped from 18 million rubles. up to 25 million. True, the number of places for rest of the flight personnel did not increase - the third floor was reserved for luxury rooms.
The Minister of Defense, according to the auditors’ report, is also “not without sin.” Having no reason to establish benefits for military personnel paying for the cost of foreign tour packages, Sergei Ivanov nevertheless did so. And service people rushed to see the world. This was done through the VSK-Tour company (a division of the Military Insurance Company) chosen without competition. More than 11 thousand people traveled abroad, for which the military department was forced to transfer almost 100 million rubles to the travel company, taking a little budget money. Moreover, the minister turned out to be so generous that he even paid the costs of serving military tourists - currency conversion, purchasing tickets and some other services. And it would be okay with these benefits - let the junior officer, who honestly serves the country and is not rich, bask somewhere on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. But the whole point is that 80% of military tourists are representatives of the central bodies of military command, that is, people from the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff itself. It is interesting that at the same time, up to 40 thousand vouchers to their own military sanatoriums are not sold out annually.
The disease of the military department is the lack of supporting documents in many cases. Auditors were unable to find reports that would shed light on how much extra-budgetary funds were received, how much was sent to the troops, how much was reimbursed, and whether all taxes were paid. In short, spending is camouflaged, like a special forces group in an ambush.
Over the years of the existence of the USSR, military warehouses turned into a real Klondike. The Department of Defense today could greatly ease the burden on the federal budget if it traded more aggressively and kept better records. However, departmental activity is decreasing year by year. Only half of the planned amount of movable military property is sold, and less than 4% of immovable military property. This is because, the Accounts Chamber concludes, that the Ministry of Defense is actually alienated from the sale of military property. As a result, the process goes uncontrollably; agent organizations significantly, sometimes by multiples, underestimate property prices. The military does not engage independent appraisers; pre-sale preparation, which would increase the price of the goods, is not carried out.
This year, 5.6 billion rubles have been allocated to replenish the budget from sales “from stock”. After the audit, the Accounts Chamber had serious doubts about the reality of this amount. The financiers of the military department weakly and not always substantively object to the Accounts Chamber. A draft resolution submitted to the government on the procedure for releasing immovable military property will resolve and clarify a lot. And of course, the reaction of the lower house of parliament, which is expected by both disputing parties. At least the Ministry of Defense so far prefers not to comment on the situation with the verification. Nikolay POROSKOV |
|
