Kudrin grateful to volunteers following up state purchases site

KRASNOYARSK, February 20 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia's Deputy Prime
Minister, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin expressed gratitude to the
conscientious citizens who study the portal of state purchases and spot
suspicious information there.
"I am grateful to civil organisations and to those who revise the
information," he said on Saturday. "I follow up the feedback and see much
of interest, even in my ministry."
He told reporters that usually he highlights necessary passages and
forwards them to the ministries mentioned.
"I take cautiously the figure of one trillion roubles /expert
estimation of corruption caused losses/, it is not easy to label
everything as stealing," he continued saying that most suspicious
purchases cannot be qualified as stealing both from the legal and the
actual points of view. The Accounting Chamber usually characterises such
cases as misaplication of funds, he said and gave an example, where an
authority "uses the money, allocated for a new desk, to clear the roof."
Kudrin agreed it necessary to improve effectiveness of state
purchases, and the new portal's input is big. Starting from the current
year, Russia's all ministries and authorities must place their tenders on
the state purchases' portal.