Since mid-February, the Prosecutor General’s Office has been conducting an unscheduled inspection of the Ministry of Culture. It concerns the spending of budget funds and the provision of subsidies, RBC reports, citing several sources.
The topics of the audit are formulated in the letter of the department to the Minister Olga Lyubimova. Prosecutors prepare a list of questions to which they want an answer. A source in the ministry claims that they are ready to provide any information.
As follows from the Unified Register of Inspections, the last time an unscheduled inspection concerning the Ministry of Culture of Russia was carried out in November 2019. Then the Moscow headquarters of the Ministry of Emergency Situations had to check the execution of the previously issued order to eliminate the detected violation.
And the last check to control the department’s expenses was carried out in 2016 at the request of State Duma deputy Alexander Ageev. Soon after, the person involved in the inquiry, Vladimir Aristarkhov, who at that time held the post of deputy minister, resigned. His brother was the head of a company that has repeatedly won tenders held by the Ministry of Culture.
In 2021, the ministry received 142.2 billion rubles for distribution. Among them, 806.8 million are processed as requests for government spending, and 111.5 million will be spent under the state program “Development of Culture”.
Earlier, the Prosecutor General’s Office checked the activities of the “Russian environmental operator” (REO). As it turned out, over the two years of its existence, the company, which was created to oversee the garbage reform, failed to develop a five-year strategy and, accordingly, still does not have targets and expected results.
At the same time, the expenses for payments to the RAE employees turned out to be more than two times higher than planned due to the cuts in other items. Prosecutors instructed the Ministry of Natural Resources and the REO to eliminate the shortcomings, and to dismiss the perpetrators or issue warnings. There are no pecuniary penalties or criminal liability.