Prosecutor-general's office confirms prime minister's suspicions.
The prosecutor-general's office has published the results of an inspection of the Volgograd mayor's office carried out at Vladimir Putin's instruction. Investigators found "many violations of the rights of business people and individuals" and are preparing to initiate criminal proceedings against some mayor's office officials. The destiny of mayor Roman Grebennikov is not clear. He agrees with the prosecutor-general's office not on all items, but is "grateful" for finding the violations and ready to correct them.
A team of investigators from the prosecutor-general's office worked in Volgograd from June 20 to 30 as per Vladimir Putin's instruction. On July 15 during an on-site meeting of the government commission on regional development he criticized the Volgograd mayor's actions regarding construction pointing out an insignificant area of property allotted for construction. The prime minister said that Astrakhan, with a population of 500,000, had commissioned as much housing as Volgograd which has one million inhabitants. Roman Sozarukov, head of the local Delovaya Rossiya branch, then complained to the prime minister about Mr Grebennikov, saying that the provision of the city's land plots had been completely corrupted by municipal officers. So the inspection of the prosecutor-general's office was a response to that statement.
Land allotment and issuance of construction permits in Volgograd depend on whether an investor is prepared to donate to a city "charity," reads the fact-finding report. The mayor's office requires developers to transfer money into its accounts (323 million rubles in 2008), transfer real property into municipal ownership (700 square metres in 2009) or to make municipal improvements. For example, Investstroy LLC paid the mayor's office 40 million rubles in exchange for a resolution to transfer a land parcel; nonetheless the administration additionally demanded repairs on a road, a kindergarten and a college for a total amount of 26.5 million rubles. The company satisfied those conditions, but was denied the land managing to receive it only through court proceedings. RusYugStroy LLP spent five years in judicial procedures to obtain a plot of land, which the mayor's office had approved as a site for the construction of a sports and fitness centre. The courts declared the refusal to allot the land invalid on three occasions, but the mayor's office ignored the court's judgments. When the mayor's office had to obey a court decision, it sometimes made a travesty of it, noted investigators. For example, after a protracted trial, city officials granted Register-Express a parcel 60 centimetres wide and 20 metres long.
Investigators also said the city almost never uses auctions, being the most transparent land allotment mechanism. In the recent two and a half years as few as 28 of 600 land plots (less than 5%) were leased through auctions. Many officials conceal expensive property and some of them overtly combine civil service with business. The uncovered violations are numerous and now "investigative bodies are about to take a decision to initiate criminal proceedings with respect to some officers of the Volgograd administration," according to the report.
The prosecutor-general's office refused to name names since pre-investigation information should be treated as confidential, therefore the main question regarding the destiny of Volgograd's mayor remains open. Roman Grebennikov was elected mayor in May 2007, being a Russian Communist Party nominee, and in April 2008 he joined United Russia and then headed Vladimir Putin's community liaison office in the region. Delovaya Rossiya has been demanding his resignation for two years now because of the poor results of municipal work. Nevertheless, all the complaints of the business community had been declined by the federal leadership of United Russia and the prosecutor-general's office. Everything changed after a representative of Delovaya Rossiya was granted an opportunity to talk to the prime minister. According to our source, Roman Sozarukov's statement was made after a proposal from Volgograd governor Anatoly Brovko, who was also discontent with the mayor's work. After talking to the premier Mr Sozarukov took charge of the internal policy department in the regional administration.
Roman Grebennikov has repeatedly characterised all these complaints as the "revenge" of the businessmen who had lost municipal contracts. "To be frank, I am grateful to the prosecutor-general's office for revealing the shortcomings in our work, and we have already started to rectify them," he said to Kommersant, "but who is perfect? If this was serious, criminal cases would have been opened long ago." Meanwhile the mayor does not quite agree with the investigators on all the issues: he believes that municipal improvement imposed on businessmen was reasonable. "Anyway, so far as the court is the highest authority in our country, it is too early to blame us for everything," he emphasized.
The co-chairman of Business Russia Volgograd branch, Andrey Kuprikov, is satisfied with the investigation's results: "The prosecutor-general's office has only confirmed what we have known for over three years: the mayor and his circle are discrediting the authorities by recurrent breaches of the law. The commission had a limited time for investigation and put down only fully-proven facts in their report. Actually, there are many more violations." Mr Kuprikov believes that the mayor's future will depend on United Russia, but the party has not formulated its position on the issue yet.
Alexander Vssilyev