The Interior Ministry is looking to spend 24.4 million rubles ($764,000) on new furniture, including a bedroom suite decorated with pure gold, according to publicly available documents.
The ministry published documents on the official web site for state orders seeking bids for furniture to be bought with federal budget funds. The order can be viewed at Zakupki.gov.ru/Tender/ViewPurchase.aspx?PurchaseId=471351.
The tender includes three lots. The first is for furniture and other interior design items for a total of 15 million rubles, while the other two are for “office furniture” worth a combined 9.4 million rubles. The documentation was approved Aug. 17, 2009, by Colonel A.A. Smolin, director of the ministry’s main purchasing department.
Vedomosti discovered that the ministry wasn’t seeking just any old furniture. For example, the order includes a bed with a hand-carved frame made from European cherry, including headboards and footboards covered with “a thin layer of gold — 24 karats.”
The office furniture must also be of the highest caliber. The varnish for a conference table can only be from Germany, while “all of the table’s fittings should be of German or Italian origin.”
Everything in the tender documents is correct, Nikolai Meshcheryakov, listed as the contact person for the order, told Vedomosti.
The results of the tender should be released Oct. 1, and the furniture must be delivered within 10 days.
The first two lots are headed for the Interior Ministry’s main directorate. Furniture from the third lot is going to Ulitsa Serebryany Bor, 4th Line, 76. A source in the Interior Ministry’s administration told Vedomosti that the address is for a reception office, as well as several state dachas where the ministry’s leadership resides.
The information was confirmed by Mikhail Starshinov, a member of the State Duma’s Security Committee.
Valery Gribakin, the ministry’s head of communications, said Tuesday that the furniture was needed because protocol for accepting high-level guests, such as other country’s police chiefs, required that they be put up in a five-star hotel.
Renovating a guesthouse once would be cheaper than constantly paying the hotel bills, he said, adding that only “gold-like foil” would be used.
State orders have not been discussed by the Interior Ministry’s Public Committee, said VTsIOM director Valery Fyodorov, who sits on the oversight and outreach body. He said the issue could be raised, however.
Fyodorov said it has been a difficult year for the ministry, and the committee has been focused on personnel issues, fighting corruption and the functioning of the law enforcement system.
Starshinov said that if the information was accurate, then it was a direct order to the Audit Chamber to begin an investigation into how the Interior Ministry is spending its funds. “It’s just not humanly decent,” he said.
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