In the latest illustration of the excessive spending by state bodies, police in St. Petersburg’s Kurortny district have asked for two luxury massage chairs costing 203,400 rubles ($6,639).
The chairs, according to the order published on the zakupki.gov.ru website on Wednesday, should have as many as 360 different modes, including “spanking” and “rhythmic” settings.
Each is about six times the country’s monthly minimum wage.
State officials are required by law to publish procurement orders online. In September, the government said it was looking to change this to allow secret auctions to be held, something anti-graft campaigners fear would mean even more corruption.
Foremost among those demanding more transparency over government tenders is online campaigner Alexei Navalny, who says they are a source of rampant state corruption. Last year, he set up the website Rospil, from the Russian word “pilit,” an idiom for “siphoning off” funds. The site monitors suspicious transactions and has tracked down over $1 billion in alleged government fraud so far.
The Kurortny police were not available for comment.
A joke doing the rounds in the Russian blogosphere says it is not for nothing the district is called Kurortny, which means “resort” in Russian. Other jokers have suggested the chairs are intended to help suspects relax during interrogation.
Massage services were also required at St. Petersburg’s aerospace construction university, which said in September it was ready to fork out $9,700 for rub-down relaxation for its staff. A $10,300 bath tub was also ordered for members of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s security service.
Most controversial, however, has been bureaucrats’ lust for luxury cars.
In July, the head of a university in the Urals ordered a $122,000 Lexus GX 460 veneered with the luxury bubinga wood and stuffed with 17 LCD monitors and a high quality hi-fi system.
A public outcry did not deter Mikhail Fyodorov from buying the vehicle. He had previously complained of a lack of funds for repairing several buildings on the university campus which had been shut down due to their condition.
The finance minister of Russia’s restive North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, Abdusamad Gamidov, withdrew an order for a $276,000 Audi saloon in February after blogger Navalny exposed the tender.
“Why should we buy limousines for local bigwigs?” Navalny said. “Most world presidents get around in more modest vehicles.”
