Municipal saw

Civil activists of St. Petersburg took up the eradication of theft among deputies of municipalities

In St. Petersburg, a branch of the Corruption Fund of Alexei Navalny began work. The founder of the project "Municipal saw " Dmitry Sukharev led the St. Petersburg representative office.

After the local elections of March 2009 in St. Petersburg, divided into 111 districts, the number of deputies of municipal councils was 1489 people. The total amount of funds allocated only this year to municipal districts and only for the improvement of the territory is more than 4 billion rubles.

In St. Petersburg, until April 2012, there was practically no mechanism for civil control over how these funds were mastered. Last April, Kommersant Dmitry Sukharev created a group of like -minded people on the VKontakte social network, do not let your yard to steal! ”, Who decided to use open information about state purchases and competitions of municipal districts, to check in the field of how this money is spent. Activists of the "municipal saw" have opened many amazing things. I will give only a few stories about the activities of municipal deputies opened by volunteers.

October 9 . The Municipal Saw found violations when signing contracts for the celebration of the Teacher's Day in the Vasileostrovsky district. All schools signed agreements with the same organization, the total amount of contracts amounted to more than half a million rubles. Such a big contract was concluded without a competition, Dmitry Sukharev said : “38 schools and kindergartens concluded contracts with the Elba company in the amount of 15 to 45 thousand. All these 38 contracts per event-the celebration of the teacher's Day in the Manege of the Cadet Corps. All these contracts were concluded without any competition, these school contracts have the right not to submit to the register. Gosakases, in this case, 38 schools on the same event spent the total amount higher than half a million rubles, respectively, a tender should be carried out here.

October 16. The "municipal saw" summed up the preliminary results of the control verification of the municipalities of St. Petersburg. The improvement inspection was carried out at twenty -eight MO from September 30 to October 6. According to Sukharev, violations of 13 million rubles were identified.

“We checked closed contracts for 404 million rubles,” said Sukharev, “we found many violations.” The overwhelming minority of the trusted districts performed the improvement honestly, only two municipalities have no complaints. The most alarming situation with improvement in the municipalities of the Nevsky district, on the left bank of the Neva: Ivanovsky MO, MO "Neva Zastava".

October 18. The case of the embezzlement of budgetary funds of the North Municipal Education was transferred to the St. Petersburg court. Managers assigned 200 thousand rubles, spending fictitious holidays for citizens. From three to six years, he threatens with wandering officials from the North Municipal District for the assignment of 200 thousand budget rubles. The leaders "sawed" money, spending fictitious holidays such as Shrovetide. Their cases have been transferred to court.

Last Sunday, I went to the raid with the volunteers of the "municipal saw" in the district of Pulkovsky Meridian. A write -off of funds for the repair of a road with an area of 1900 square meters was discovered: the money was received and the work was not completed. Volunteers photographed pits to provide pictures to law enforcement agencies.

Sukharev notes: the investigating authorities almost do not respond to statements about the abuses of municipal deputies, but he hopes that with the advent of the branch of the Corruption Fund, the political situation (especially on the eve of the municipal elections of March 2014) will change for the better. But the deputy of the Finnish municipality, Kirill Strakhov from the Yabloko party, does not have illusions:

- I don't know about what four billion rubles, allegedly allocated

Municipal districts, says Dmitry Sukharev. There are local budgets of municipalities that are not allocated from nowhere. These are funds received from tax collection from enterprises and citizens. Some of our taxes with you go to the local budget. This main article of the local budget revenues, it is one and a half or two percent of the total city budget. The second article of income is subsidies from the city budget, which are allocated to municipalities by the decision of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg. It was this part that has long been an example of bright corruption abuse, because it is precisely those municipalities that deputies of ZakSA at their discretion that get into the budget. Most often, these are municipalities in the territory accountable to a specific deputy who has great authority among colleagues of the Legislative Assembly. Naturally, this is a deputy from the ruling party. Naturally, these are the municipalities that then provide him with victory in the elections. This corruption mechanism has existed for a long time.

- Do the St. Petersburg municipalities have the same budgets?

- Very different. There are rich municipalities that "collect" 120 million rubles a year. These are mainly municipalities of the central regions of St. Petersburg, in which many enterprises paying large taxes are registered. There are municipalities more victorious, having 40 million rubles a year. But even in terms of amounts, it is clear what a meager amount of funds it is compared to the one that is spent and part of which is plundered in the city as a whole.

- How do you feel about the project "Municipal saw"?

- Of course, I welcome this project with all my heart, like any other civilian project to control public funds. But he

It is not at all a solution to the most important, key problems of local self -government. I'm afraid that this project does not concern them at all. We are talking about some "cuts" of funds allocated for the improvement of playgrounds, road surface, sports grounds. This "cut", of course, exists, pure truth. But his share in the general city "cut" is ridiculous. Let us compare at least by budget revenues for 2012. One of the richest regions of St. Petersburg is Nevsky, it has nine municipalities, in which almost 300 thousand citizens live. Their total budget for 2012 is 650 million rubles. The consumption of this amount is designed to control 140 municipal deputies, for this purpose they are elected. But in the same area there is a district administration, this is the body of the administration of St. Petersburg, the Smolny body. His estimate for the same year is 7.5 billion rubles. And no one controls the expense of these billions of rubles, because there are neither deputies of the district level, nor any regulatory authorities. We can put life on investigating how 650 million rubles are spent, but this will not solve the problem. And there are 18 such areas in St. Petersburg.

The system, of course, is built on purpose. Citizens are moved away from control over local budgets, removed from resolving local issues. In recent years, we have been observing fantastic inflating of the states of municipal councils and local administrations. I can say this on the example of my district "Finland", in which I have been working as a deputy for a tenth year. At the last council, it was decided to withdraw 600 thousand rubles allocated for improvement, raising children and so on, and transfer these funds to the salary of the administration to introduce three new full -time units. Now there are 33 such units. When I came to the municipal council ten years ago, there were eight employees, ”says the municipal deputy Kirill Strakhov .

Leading employee of the Institute of Law Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg, Kirill Titaev , explains why so little criminal cases are initiated on the facts of abuse and inappropriate spending of budget funds by officials:

- Officials and security officials in Russia have a small share in the total number of convicted ones, less than one percent. Our law enforcement agencies can work with marginal crime, because 60 percent of all

The accused of Russian courts are unemployed. If one person out of a thousand is justified from among the unemployed, then from among officials and security officials - 30 out of 100 people. Why is this happening? Firstly, our police, investigating authorities can fight best of all with violent, property crimes of the first generation, and officials almost do not commit such crimes. Officials do not commit small thefts, do not steal cars and do not steal radio from them. Secondly, officials and security officials are people with unconditional access to high-quality protection at a pre-investigation and pre-trial stage. If the municipal deputy is falling drunk face to the head of the administration in an expensive tavern, then the lawyer will appear before the police arrived and will accompany the investigation of what happened throughout all stages, for a good fee.

Our institute does not yet have a concrete explanation why officials and security forces on average 30 times more often justify in Russian courts than the defendants in general. There are several hypotheses. Social proximity, for example: The judge, looking at the official, understands a much greater extent how it works

The life of this person than the life of the unemployed Vasya. The realities of the life of an entrepreneur, which he is trying to convey to the judge, are very far from the realities of life of the judge. But when the official reports the order of the authorities, not quite legal, but requiring execution, the judge understands him ... or another factor. In a situation where an official or security official or a security official, the system begins to work as it should be on the bench: the judges stop turning a blind eye to all sorts of little things that they close them in the case when they see their main task - to isolate the “obvious criminal” from the society. For example, they cease to make discounts on the negligence or shortcomings of the work of investigators, ”explains Kirill Titaev.