According to the statistics of the Prosecutor General’s Office, for 11 months of this year, 5.8% more violations were detected in the field of public procurement than in the same period of 2019. Experts told Izvestia that the main reasons were the weakened control over transactions during the quarantine, as well as the illegal conduct of emergency purchases, allegedly related to the pandemic.
“Many have tried to pull their government purchases to the situation with the coronavirus. But medicine is one thing, and buying paper clips, for example, is another. Under the same pretext, some quietly began to conclude government contracts with a single supplier, ”said Alexander Stroganov, general director of the State Order Placement Center, lawyer.
According to him, control in the field of public procurement has weakened during the quarantine period, and in the summer, when the situation with the incidence of coronavirus began to decline, the prosecutor’s office began checks and revealed a huge number of violations.
In turn, the chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, Kirill Kabanov, said that another common violation this year was the inflated price of goods from suppliers. He noted that prosecutorial inspections revealed cases when medical masks were purchased at 18–20 rubles apiece, while their average price was 8 rubles.
“At the regional level, as before, the main violation is the conflict of interests, affiliation. Many of these contracts need to be canceled. Most likely, the prosecutor’s office will now appeal the legality of such transactions, ”Kabanov said.
Read more in the exclusive material of Izvestia:
Covering themselves with a crown: the number of violations with public procurement increased by almost 6%