“To conduct an investigation into the facts of abuse”: Kudrin finally showed “dirty linen”

“Reports of the Accounts Chamber cover a wide range of issues – from inclusiveness and healthcare to culture, education, ecology and industry,” Kudrin himself said on this occasion. “They can become a valuable source of data on the activities of the state and the development of the country since 1996. The Archive “is another step towards the openness of the state. I am sure it will benefit journalists, scientists, students and all civil society in Russia.”

Well, let’s follow the advice of Alexei Leonidovich and take a look at the evolution of the state through the prism of the reports of the Accounts Chamber. A full-fledged study of this topic involves a thorough study of the entire volume of “verification” materials of the Chamber, issued over the course of 27 years of its existence. But this approach takes a lot of time. Here you won’t get off not just in a day, but, perhaps, in a year.

We made it easy for ourselves and compared the latest inspection materials with the very first ones. Well, more precisely, the first available. The earliest published materials date back to April 1997. This includes the report “On the results of checking the effectiveness and expediency of spending federal budget funds on the implementation of the presidential program” Children of Russia “.

The list of violations identified during the audit is huge. Here are the characteristic selected places: “The total amount of inappropriate and inefficient use of funds provided for in the federal budget for 1996 for current expenses” amounted to 28575.0 million rubles, or 47.4 percent of the appropriations allocated in 1996 to finance the presidential program “Children Russia”…

Facts have been established when funds are illegally written off for actual expenses immediately after they are transferred to contractors without documentary evidence … The Ministry of Labor of Russia and the Ministry of Education of Russia embarked on the illegal path of additional payments from program funds to staff members of ministries, including executives, for participation in the work included in their official duties…

Striking, however, is not only the scale of the revealed mess, but also the severity of the response measures proposed by the Accounts Chamber. This list is crowned by the following points: “The Ministry of Finance of Russia to collect to the budget from the Ministry of Labor of Russia‚ the Ministry of Education of Russia‚ the Ministry of Health of Russia‚ the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Russia … funds used without documentary confirmation in the amount of 88316.6 million rubles …

The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation to conduct an investigation into possible facts of abuse and violations of state financial discipline, bring the perpetrators to justice and take measures to compensate for the material damage caused to the state … Collect illegally received funds from officials of the Ministry of Labor of Russia and the Ministry of Education of Russia in the amount of 56, 9 million rubles confirmed by documents, and ensure the accuracy of accounting and reporting.

As the Vainers brothers rightly noted through the mouth of their hero Gleb Zheglov: “The rule of law in the country is determined not by the presence of thieves, but by the ability of the authorities to neutralize them.” Of course, one cannot say about the Russian authorities of the 1990s era that they were good at neutralizing thieves. But it is absolutely impossible to blame the Accounts Chamber for insufficient vigilance: it just did everything in its power. Almost continuously sounded the alarm. A rare report of the Joint Venture in those years was not accompanied by the phrase: “Information about the results of the check was sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation.”

Some reports relating to that historical period are a ready-made plot for a detective. For example, the results of “testing the intended use of budget loans allocated by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation to the National Credit Bank to finance the Samorodinka housing and construction complex in 1995-1997 and Agrofirma Abrau-Dyurso CJSC in 1994-1997.”

According to the document, the loan in the amount of USD 45 million was provided to the bank “based on the own decision of the First Deputy Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation A.P. Vavilov, who initiated and signed loan agreement No. 11-03-05 \ 05 dated April 10, 1995 between Ministry of Finance of Russia and CB “National Credit” without a corresponding resolution (decision) of the Government of the Russian Federation and a tender.

Another piquant detail: “The guarantor of the repayment of the loan and interest on it within the terms specified in the agreement was CB National Credit, i.e. the borrower himself.” The trace of the allocated budget money was soon lost: “The funds in the amount of $45 million transferred under the loan agreement … to the correspondent account of CB National Credit in the Bank of New York were not used for the intended purpose, their further movement is unknown.” And then the borrower himself disappeared: the bank was declared bankrupt.

Further more interesting. According to the tripartite agreement signed by Vavilov, the obligations of the bankrupt debtor for some reason are assumed by the National Sports Fund. Then the Ministry of Finance decides on “additional financing of the NSF from the federal budget under the procedure for compensating for losses,” and these funds are used to pay off debt on a budget loan. And that’s it – there is no debt to the budget! Despite the fact that the money was not returned to the budget.

“Thus, officials of the Russian Ministry of Finance (A.P. Vavilov, A.V. Smirnov, V.B. Volkov) … by their actions caused damage to the federal budget in the amount of USD 47.55 million (the principal amount of the loan plus interest. – A.V.), while they took measures to conceal the damage,” concludes the auditor of the joint venture Alexander Nozhnikov.

Despite this conclusion, for the protagonist of this story, Andrei Vavilov, everything ended, as far as we know, safely: he got out of the water completely dry. Similarly, several other similar stories ended for him. Well, except for the fact that in February 1997 his official car was blown up, Vavilov himself was in the building of the Ministry of Finance at that time and was not injured.

However, such a “dry” outcome, in fairness, cannot be attributed solely to the specifics of the “dashing 1990s”: Andrei Petrovich fit into the new era quite well. For a long time – from 2002 to 2010 – he was a member of the Federation Council. And now he heads the board of directors of the SuperOx company, which specializes in the production of high-temperature superconductors and is in fairly close relations with government agencies – a number of the company’s projects are supported by the state.

But back to our Accounts Chamber. And let’s go back at the same time from the 1990s back to the present – let’s see how modern reports of joint venture auditors look like. We will not bore the reader with lengthy quotations and numbers. The results of the inspections are indicated by the headlines of the relevant news on the website of the Joint Venture: “Accounts Chamber: the rehabilitation centers of the Social Insurance Fund are operating efficiently, but not at full capacity … The plan for the modernization of reference laboratories until 2024 is promising, but requires updating … In 2021, all the tasks of the programs and measures of the Union State have been completed… Banks capitalized through the OFZ mechanism are fulfilling the prescribed requirements… Citizens are not yet sufficiently informed about their rights in the field of compulsory medical insurance.”

And here is the central conclusion of the latest check: “State support measures aimed at developing the resorts of the Caucasian Mineral Waters, including the city of Kislovodsk, have positively affected the quality of life of the population and the image of the region as a whole. However, a full-fledged management system for the long-term and integrated socio-economic development of Kavminvod not yet formed.”

Well, that is, there are still some shortcomings, but they are in no way able to obscure accomplishments. The trend is obvious: for almost 28 years of the existence of the Accounts Chamber, the volume of financial outrages revealed by it has greatly decreased. The nature of violations has also changed: the Joint Venture has long ceased to call for help from the Prosecutor General’s Office and the investigating authorities.

What are the reasons for the trend? It is clear that budgetary discipline has strengthened over the years. But it is difficult to call such an explanation exhaustive. After all, they haven’t stopped stealing over the years. Moreover, they steal, judging by the number of officials imprisoned and the size of what they have acquired through overwork, at least not on a smaller scale. And exposed and imprisoned – this is just the visible tip of the corruption iceberg.

And there is nothing to say about the volumes of public finances that go into the sand due to ill-conceived decisions. Here our time can give odds to the “dashing 1990s”. In general, objectively speaking, the reports of the Accounts Chamber could be more varied and more interesting. Hence the conclusion: the rule of law has not been strengthened over the years as much as the Accounts Chamber itself, its role in the system of power, has changed.

According to one of the founders of the chamber, ex-deputy chairman of the joint venture Yuri Boldyrev, fatal changes in the fate of the control body occurred in 2003: after the law on the Accounts Chamber was amended, its chairman, his deputy and auditors began to be appointed at the proposal of the president – before the initiative had to come from deputies of the State Duma and members of the Federation Council.

“From now on, there is no independent Accounts Chamber in the country,” Yury Yuryevich said in an interview with MK. “Whoever feeds a girl dances her. Whoever puts a person in a post depends on that person.” According to Boldyrev, the Accounts Chamber in its current form is, in fact, a backup of the President’s Control Department “with some public simulation of independent control.”

The recent events connected with the change of its head testify to how insignificant the political weight of the current Accounts Chamber is. Kudrin was relieved of his post by the Federation Council (at the suggestion of the president), while the law on the joint venture says in black and white: “The Chairman of the Accounts Chamber is early dismissed by the decision of the State Duma.”

No, according to the Constitution, everything has been done right: according to the Constitution, amended and supplemented in 2020, the appointment and dismissal of the head of the Accounts Chamber is the responsibility of the Federation Council. Well, that is, the Basic Law was corrected, but they did not bother to bring the law on joint ventures into line with it in two and a half years. It looks like they just forgot.

But to be honest, on this basis, one does not dare to reproach parliamentarians and other servants of the people responsible for lawmaking for neglecting their duties. They also have more important matters connected with more important authorities.