High-profile schemes of stealing money from Russia are revealed

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The billion-dollar embezzlement during the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome, which Vladimir Putin indignantly reminded about the other day, can serve as material for a comprehensive study of the schemes for cutting public money. The same schemes have been actively used at other "construction sites of the century" in recent years. What are the most popular ways to steal government money in such cases?

The opportunities for cutting, which flourished in the recent past, have now significantly narrowed, and it has become much more effective to identify corruption mechanisms in the implementation of government contracts. However, some eternal techniques are still relevant to this day - and there are a lot of examples of this both in investigative and judicial practice. Let's list them.

Overstating the cost of work

This is a classic sawing mechanism, for the implementation of which a corrupt official needs to have either “pocket” companies or connections with entrepreneurs who are ready to set the required amount for their work or services with a kickback already included in it. However, this is only the most general scheme, which in practice has many nuances and loopholes.

For example, in the case of the Vostochny cosmodrome, the overestimation of the cost of work was carried out by developing individual indices for recalculating the estimated cost of construction. Back in 2015, the Accounts Chamber established that these actions could be aimed at overstating budget expenditures and obtaining unreasonable profits, while individual indices for Vostochny were not determined by regulatory legal acts and did not comply with the instructions of the country's leadership. As a result of the use of individual indices, the cost of construction of the cosmodrome facilities increased by almost 13.2 billion rubles, in which the Accounts Chamber saw a corruption component.

A lot of violations related to the overestimation of the cost of work under state and municipal contracts have been revealed in recent years in Crimea, where, after joining Russia, a shock infrastructure construction was launched. The first criminal cases began to be initiated already in 2015. As reported at the end of last year, a representative of the Crimean Prosecutor's Office Dinara Kayumova, corruption crimes are mainly committed in the construction sector when preparing design estimates: officials profit from the overstatement of building materials and the amount of work to be done, often as part of the implementation of the Federal Target Program for the Development of Crimea. Alexander Akshatin, chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Republic of Crimea, noted at the same time that 40 officials had been dismissed for corruption in two years.

The most high-ranking person involved in criminal cases related to the overstatement of work under government contracts was the former head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Alexander Reimer. He, along with several subordinates, was accused of embezzling 2.7 billion rubles by inflating purchase prices when purchasing electronic bracelets to control citizens in custody. In June 2017, the Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow sentenced Reimer to eight years in prison.

Purchase of substandard goods and services

This scheme is actively used in the implementation of government construction contracts. Since the construction site involves the supply of many materials and components, there is always an opportunity to save on quality, and pocket the difference.

One of the most memorable episodes using this scheme is the construction of stadiums for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Kaliningrad and Rostov-on-Don. In particular, in Kaliningrad, as found out by law enforcement agencies, within the framework of the contract between the regional administration of the capital construction customer of the Kaliningrad region and OJSC "Globalelectroservice", cheap sand was purchased and used to strengthen the soil under the future stadium, which did not meet the requirements of the project. The purchase of substandard sand allowed the participants in the fraud to steal more than 750 million rubles.

A similar scheme was used during the construction of the Rostov-Arena stadium on the left bank of the Don. Soon after the end of the football holiday, the defendants in criminal cases under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Fraud on an especially large scale") became the founder and general director of JSC "Dontransgidromekhanizatsiya" - a company that performed engineering preparation and improvement of approaches to the stadium. According to the investigators, in this process, instead of coarse-grained sand specified in the state contract, fine natural sand was used, which saved 223 million rubles, although the full amount was paid under the contract - 473.9 million rubles. The officials who took over the work on the supply and laying of sand - ex-Minister of Construction of the Rostov Region Nikolai Bezuglov and director of the Rostovoblstroyzakazchik institution Sergey Mishchenko - also became involved in criminal cases.

Of course, similar machinations were used during the construction of the East. The investigation suspected the former head of FSUE Dalspetsstroy, Yuri Khrizman, of purchasing cement, pipes and tires at significantly inflated prices through the firms of his son and friend - the scale of theft amounted to about 1.8 billion rubles. In February last year, Khrizman was found guilty of embezzling a total of about 5, 3 billion rubles and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Inappropriate spending of funds

This multifaceted scheme of cutting public money was present in many high-profile anti-corruption cases in recent years. For example, within the framework of the GLONASS case, connected with the theft of money for the development of the Russian geosteering system, numerous facts of their misappropriation were revealed - the funds were transferred to fictitious subcontractors and disappeared. In October, the court passed sentences to the organizers of the construction of the GLONASS System Control Center, who were able to steal 251 million rubles ($ 20 million). As the investigation established, the work estimates were artificially inflated, and intermediaries were introduced into the chains of contractors through whom the money was withdrawn - as a result, the object was never completed.

Another notorious anti-corruption case related to the misappropriation of funds was initiated in 2013 on the facts of relevant violations in the state company "Resorts of the North Caucasus" for a total amount of more than 275 million rubles. Personally, the case against the general director of the company, Akhmed Bilalov, was initiated under Art. 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of power) in connection with illegal payment of foreign business trips in the amount of more than 3 million rubles. The same businessman and his brother Magomed Bilalov "distinguished themselves" during the construction of the Gornaya Karusel resort in preparation for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The Krasnaya Polyana company controlled by the brothers, having entered into an agreement with the state corporation Olympstroy, received more than 1 billion rubles from Sberbank, after which this money was placed in the Bilalovs bank, which then credited the construction at a commercial interest.

A clever scheme of misappropriation of funds was also used during the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome. Back in 2016, Roskosmos filed a lawsuit against the general construction contractor, FSUE Dalspetsstroy, who quite creatively disposed of the 39.5 billion rubles advance transferred to him. Of this amount, as established by Roskosmos, only 6, 1 billion rubles were used for the intended purpose, and the rest of the money was placed on a deposit with Gazprombank. In the future, it turned out that the contractor, due to a shortage of working capital, had to attract loans from the same bank and repay them from the money received as an advance.

Withdrawing money through fly-by-night firms

One of the most popular schemes for cutting budget funds, which does not require special skill, exists in different variations.

The researcher of this topic Dmitry Guk from the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences cited at least three of them in one of his articles. In the first case, an organization that does not carry out real commercial activities is used as an imaginary participant in a tender for the implementation of a state or municipal contract as a twin company of a company affiliated with officials, which ultimately receives a contract. The second option - the competition is won directly by the one-day, after which the budget money received on its account is cashed and disappears in an unknown direction.

As an example, Dmitry Guk cites the following story: in 2003-2005, the heads of one of the research institutes of the Ministry of Defense stole more than 13 million rubles, drawing up fictitious contracts for the performance of research work with dummy commercial firms, and in fact, these studies were carried out during their official hours by the research staff of the institute … Another option for using fly-by-night is to pay kickbacks from their accounts to corrupt officials. In this case, this is one of the elements within the framework of another cutting scheme - the overestimation of the cost of the work performed or the services provided. The unreasonable difference is transferred by the company that won the competition to the one-day account and then transferred to the interested official in cash.

In the scandals around the Vostochny cosmodrome, one-day firms, or, as they are also called by the tax authorities, "moths", of course, were present.

Back in 2015, law enforcement agencies established that the amount of damage from cashing out funds through one-day firms under state contracts for the construction of Vostochny was estimated at at least 400 million rubles.

In the past few years, the efforts of the Bank of Russia management to liquidate banks that acted as clearing-house platforms have led to the fact that the possibilities of using fly-by-night firms to steal budget funds have become significantly less. If back in 2009, almost two-thirds of registered Russian companies did not conduct real activities, then as of last year the share of shell companies, according to the Federal Tax Service, dropped to 7% of the total number of all companies. The volume of illegal withdrawal of funds by bank clients, according to the Central Bank, in 2013-2018 decreased 20 times, and the commission for cashing out jumped from the previous 1-2% to 11-12%.

Atypical "schematosis"

The mechanisms of budget funds embezzlement listed above are, so to speak, routine - in general terms, they are repeated in hundreds of anti-corruption cases. But there are also non-standard schemes that indicate that the ingenuity of bribe-taking officials knows no bounds. One such example is a multi-step fraud orchestrated by a group led by the former Minister of Finance of the Moscow Region, Alexei Kuznetsov.

As established by the investigation, from 2005 to 2008, Kuznetsov and his accomplices bought the rights to claim debts from the municipalities of the Moscow region from the housing and communal services enterprises near Moscow, then these rights were sold to the bank, which applied for payments to the municipalities. As a result, about 11 billion rubles were stolen from the budget, which were transferred to foreign accounts. In addition, Kuznetsov was presented with embezzlement in the amount of 2 billion rubles. The ex-official agreed with the accusations and is now awaiting a court verdict.

The former head of the Republic of Mari El, Leonid Markelov, also came up with a very intricate scheme of personal enrichment at the expense of the budget. The basis for the criminal case against him, opened a few days after his resignation in April 2017, was the receipt of a bribe of 235 million rubles. And the reason for the bribe was Markelov's lobbying of the interests of a large regional poultry farm, which was provided with budget subsidies in the amount of 5 billion rubles to pay off the interest rate on investment loans. In addition to this cunning scam, Markelov was caught in such a popular scheme of embezzlement of budget money as employment of fictitious employees in the civil service - his personal guards received salaries from the Mari El budget as specialists of the secretariat of the head of the region.