Page 18 - RusRPTMay19

2.14 Politics - misc
Pilot error caused the plane crash that killed Russian millionaires Natalia Fileva and owner of the S7 commercial airline in Germany on April . According to preliminary findings, the pilot slowed too much during the approach and the small plane went into a flat spin and burst into flames on impact, killing all three passengers instantly. One of the richest women in Russia and a well regarded entrepreneur Fileva was worth over $600mn according to the Russian Forbes rich list.
US fund manager Michael Calvey has been release from pretrial detention by the Moscow’s Basmanny Court and placed under house arrest, Tass reported from the courtroom on April 11. Russia’s most famous fund manager Calvey and several of his colleagues from Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP) were arrested after the Federal Security Service (FSB) opened an investigation into an accusation that BVCP illegally mispriced shares in the Oriental Express Bank (OEB). Calvey is accused of RUB2.5bn ($37.5mn) embezzlement.
The volume of violations in the field of public procurement in 2018 amounted to RUB294.6bn. This is 2.5 times higher than in 2017 and 5.5 times higher than in 2016, said the auditor of the Accounts Chamber Tatyana Blinova at the April HSE International Conference. According to her, the number of violations remains almost unchanged, but their amount is growing, RBC reports. Nearly 40% of the total violations are associated with an unreasonable increase in the value of contracts, Blinova said. Another 20% - a violation of the procedure for acceptance and payment of outstanding work. The auditor also noted the growth of corruption in the state administration; not only commercial and non-profit organizations, but also state-financed institutions are specially created to withdraw funds. “The schemes are getting bigger, they are becoming more sophisticated. Most of these schemes are fully within the law,” Blinova added. The Prosecutor General's Office said that in 2018 revealed 150,000 violations in the field of procurement. Of these, 6% had a corruption component. According to the materials of inspections, 275 criminal cases were initiated, 2500 people were brought to disciplinary and criminal liability.
2.11 Polls & Sociology
Almost a third of Russians believe that Vladimir Zelenskiy’s victory in the presidential elections in Ukraine is more beneficial for Russia than the re- election of Petro Poroshenko, the Levada Center found. 55% believe that the winner’s name has no meaning for Russia. 68% of respondents said they followed this campaign, including 30% “very carefully” or “rather attentively”. The more educated metropolitan public paid more attention (in Moscow, 36% of respondents closely followed the elections). Older people were even more interested (45%).
The internet in Russia should continue to develop as a network “uniting the whole world,” more than half of Russians said in a study conducted by the state-funded VCIOM pollster, Novaya Gazeta reports. The study comes two weeks after Russia’s lower house of parliament approved the third reading of a draft law that aims to increase Moscow’s sovereignty over the country’s internet segment, also known as the “internet isolation law.” Fifty-two percent
18 RUSSIA Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com