February 25, 2016, 11:40 / Economy / News

Deputy Prime Minister Kozak explained the resignation of the Governor of Transbaikalia and the reprimand of the Governor of Karelia

The resignation of the Governor of the Trans-Baikal Territory, Konstantin Ilkovsky, and the reprimand of the head of Karelia, Alexander Khudilainen, are due to the fact that these regions spent budget funds inefficiently. This was stated by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak to TASS. According to him, these decisions were led to “the imposition of financial sanctions for failure to fulfill accepted obligations to use the subsidies received.”

Kozak recalled that in 2014 the government approved mechanisms for the responsibility of both federal and regional authorities for fulfilling obligations to effectively use budget funds allocated to solve priority regional and local problems. These mechanisms began to work in 2015, when a number of federal authorities were financially punished for untimely delivery of budget funds to the regions. “I am confident that the consistent practical application of responsibility measures will significantly stimulate both the heads of federal ministries and departments, and regional leaders to increase the efficiency of planning and spending budget funds,” the Deputy Prime Minister said.

President Vladimir Putin accepted Ilkovsky's resignation and reprimanded Khudilainen on February 17. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov explained on the same day that Putin made decisions based on the results of detailed conversations with both regional leaders. “Problems of financial discipline and fulfillment of obligations in various areas were raised at the traditional meeting of the president with members of the government, and following this meeting, the president, as usual, examined the situation in detail himself. In general, of course, in many respects it leaves much to be desired in the mentioned regions,” Peskov said. He said that both regions received certain funds from the housing and communal services assistance fund, which were supposed to be used for resettlement from emergency housing stock, but did not cope well with fulfilling obligations on these issues. Peskov also noted the lack of discipline on loans and bloated management apparatus. When asked why one governor was dismissed and the other was not, although there are problems in both regions, the presidential press secretary replied that the situation in the regions is still different, “the severity of the crisis is different, and the debt burden is different, and the situation with payment salaries vary." “In this case, the one who wished to resign resigned,” he added.