St. Petersburg officials who earmarked 3.5 million rubles ($120,000) of state money for thousands of porcelain plates have been given a satirical award for the most ridiculous state tender in the city, the opposition Yabloko party said.
The hotel department of the city governor’s administration was voted laureate of the 2012 Golden Toilet Brush award for ordering pricey crockery, including almost 3,000 German-made plates priced between 550 and 710 rubles ($18 to 24) apiece.
This is a second win for the department, which also won the 2009 prize for ordering kitchen herbs and spices worth 250,000 rubles, including breadcrumbs priced at 2,000 rubles per kilo.
The 2012 winner defeated the St. Petersburg government’s transport committee, which allotted almost 5.5 million rubles for planning city transport operations for the 2018 World Cup games Russia is hosting.
Another nomination, the St. Petersburg housing committee, which apparently ordered a 150,000 rubles chair for its boss, was dropped after the committee said that the sum was actually allotted for the purchase of 10 chairs. It blamed the misunderstanding on a typo.
The laureate of the award, which organized by Yabloko’s youth branch, was named on Monday, but still had to collect its prize as of Wednesday, according to the party’s website.
The conduct of state tenders is notoriously corrupt in Russia, with 1 trillion rubles a year lost in kickbacks and embezzlement, according to the Kremlin’s own estimates from 2011.
Activists have mounted a broad campaign to highlight questionable tenders, which are now held via a special governmental website open to public.
The Golden Toilet Brush prize was created in 2009 after the city government ordered cleaning utensils priced at 13,000 rubles each, despite their not being made of gold.
