The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office is having dozens of new buildings constructed, including a 2.4 billion ruble ($81 million) head office on the Garden Ring, although additional budget expenses were never intended when the committee was formed.
In 2013, the Investigative Committee plans to complete a new building in Moscow for its central office, a spokesperson said in response to questions from Vedomosti. Based on preliminary estimates, the planning, construction and connection of the 19,320-square-meter building to utilities networks will cost 2.42 billion rubles.
According to the Federal Address Investment Program, or FAIP, 16.2 million rubles ($550,000) has been allotted for the design, which will begin this year. The building will be at 29 Ulitsa Zemlyanoi Val, Bldg. 3 — right beside Kursky Station.
FAIP lists two requirements for the new building: a built-in parking lot for 200 cars and sufficient auxiliary facilities. The committee's main office is now on Tekhnichesky Pereulok in a multistory building that it inherited from the Prosecutor General's Office.
"They gave us what they didn't want and then moved to Petrovka," an official at the committee said.
The expenses for new space are connected to the formation of investigative bodies, the Investigative Committee said. The committee — along with the Federal Property Management Agency, regional and municipal authorities — is constantly looking for appropriate buildings for its offices, it said.
The Investigative Committee's expenses to construct and buy buildings have more than doubled this year. The committee's head, Alexander Bastrykin, said at a recent meeting that investigators spent 829 million rubles last year. According to FAIP's figures, the Investigative Committee has been allotted 1.85 billion rubles to obtain property this year.
This year's funds will be used to build and buy 44 buildings in the regions, as well as to renovate and redesign several others. The work will be done in 34 regions, although that number could increase, the Investigative Committee said.
When the State Duma passed the law creating the Investigative Committee in the spring of 2007, the legislation said granting additional autonomy to the committee would not require any federal budget expenses. By the fall, however, the body had already requested 4 billion rubles to fund its operations in the last quarter of 2007, Duma Deputy Alexander Khinshtein said.
The lawmaker was on the Duma's commission for classified budget expenditures and blocked the money, but they were later forced to disburse the sum, Khinshtein said.
The Investigative Committee's overall budget for 2010 is 19 billion rubles.
Their most expensive building outside Moscow, costing 376 million rubles ($12.7 million), was purchased last year for the committee's investigative department in the Astrakhan region. An official said the cost was high because the building also housed municipal investigators.
The second-largest expenditure is for the committee's investigative department in the Ivanovo region, for which FAIP has allotted 320 million rubles. The body is already renting the building and working out of it; now they are deciding whether it makes sense to purchase the space.
The Ivanovo building was constructed specially for the committee and belongs to the builder. It cost more during construction, but they were able to drive down the price because of the crisis, and now it should cost less than 320 million rubles, an official with the committee said.
When the Finance Ministry was signing off on the prices, the investigators attached to the documents sent to the ministry all of the buildings for sale in Ivanovo that would be suitable, an official from the investigative department said. Previously, the investigators were sharing a space with local prosecutors — as is still the case in many regions — and once every two weeks the prosecutors sent a written request asking them to leave, the Ivanovo official said.
The Investigative Committee said it was currently preparing cost estimates for administrative buildings for 2011 to 2013.
The more modest Prosecutor General's Office was given 564 million rubles to acquire new buildings this year. Their biggest expense — 132 million rubles — will be for a building in Magas, capital of Ingushetia, which will house 58 employees. A 102 million ruble office will be built for prosecutors in the Voronezh region, while officials in the Oryol region will get a new building costing 100 million rubles.
When the investigators were split apart from the prosecutors, the Finance Ministry divided their budget and did not expect to have to spend more to pay for additional service personnel, an Investigative Committee official said.
Every state body should have its own accountants, secretaries and other support staff, said former Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov.
Finding space for a new agency is only easy in regions where existing federal property that meets the Investigative Committee's requirements is available, an official at the committee said.
Khinshtein said there were fewer than 20 such regions. It was suggested that investigators rent a building where they would be allowed to do a capital overhaul, only purchasing property if that is impossible, the source in the Investigative Committee said.
Skuratov said he thought that lawmakers were misled when the Investigative Committee was created. They should have known that it would essentially be an independent body, not part of the Prosecutor General's Office. As investigators move into the new space, the committee should keep in mind that the reform was of a transitional nature and that talks are ongoing about creating a unified investigative committee, he said.
Otherwise, the investigators could once again end up without enough space, Skuratov said.