The participants of the meeting at the Bocharov Ruchei Residence bowed to the greatness of the tasks set by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Vladimir Putin Ordered to Make It on the Cheap
// The Olympic Movement 2014 at the economic austerity
Yesterday was Vladimir Putin’s last meeting as President in Sochi featuring the preparation for the Olympic games. The outgoing president strictly ordered that money be saved at the design stage. Ú’s special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov believes that this order will apply to buying up the land of the local population as well.
At the very beginning of the meeting Vladimir Putin said that the IOC commission would soon arrive in Moscow. This might have been the reason why his brief speech was optimistic as if drafted specially for that commission, rather than the people responsible for building the Olympic facilities, which for the most part haven’t been designed so far.
Nonetheless Vladimir Putin expressed his view on the projects. He declared that the documents enabling the start of designing the facilities and selecting contractors were adopted. According to Putin, 50 Olympic facilities are at the design stage. Perfect, it’s been a year since the Sochi victory in Guatemala, and 50 facilities are at the design stage!
Putin added that economic austerity must be applied at the design stage (little else can sadden an architect who won a grant on building Olympic facilities than such a remark, and there is little else that can make his most audacious fantasies appear an offspring of his diseased imagination).
“Quite a pace has been set in Sochi,” Vladimir Putin said.
It was the first time after Guatemala he was talking that. Such a conclusion must have been forged by the forthcoming arrival of the IOC commission, whose pace has been quite high too – it visits Sochi at least as often as once in a quarter.
“We have set a definite schedule,” Putin went on. “I gathered you here to check whether you duly follow it.”
The meeting lasted more than two hours and was heated, as some of the participants confessed. Mr Putin spoke not less than the speakers. As President, he was talking to them for the last time, and he might have wished his words to be remembered by those present (still it feels like these people will remember the words of Prime Minister Putin long as well, perhaps, always).
The Head of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Organizing Committee (SOOC) Dmitry Chernyshenko said that the current stage of designing and building the facilities was the crucial one. You can presume that this stage will be the crucial one till February 2014.
Russia’s Regional Development Minister Dmitry Kozak declared that the project would be very eco-friendly.
“You might know how those coming here suffer,” he added (yes, I have no doubt they are likely to suffer coming to the All-Russian health resort – A.K.).
“In a couple of hours our plane takes off for Beijing, where we will frankly tell the IOC members that everything will be all right,” said Dmitry Chernyshenko so expressively that I felt an impulse to wish him a soft landing and a happy return to his Motherland, the city of the future – Sochi, where not everything is all right so far but it is bound to change soon, which has been good news for the IOC members as well as millions of sport fans round the globe for as long as a year already.
Simeon Vainshtok, the head of the Olimpstroy corporation, took part at the meeting together with Russia’s Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov. Mr Vainshtok stood far from microphones and cameras. His time to give interviews is yet to come (perhaps it will never come at all). Still this was the person worth talking to.
When asked which foreign investors and governments had shown their interest in building the Olympic facilities (Vladimir Putin spoke about it at the meeting), apart from Belarus, whose president was the first to display his interest in the matter, Mr Vainshtok answered without hesitation, “You’d better name those who show no interest! Denmark, Switzerland, Austria (Mr Vainshtok must have started enumerating the countries at the top of a geographical map. – A.K.)… And Australia too!”
“And who will win?” I asked.
“It is not to be discussed,” Mr Vainshtok seemed to have been frightened by the hint of mine. “They all will have the same chances! It will be subject to control!”
“And who will control it?”
“Oh,” Mr Vainshtok rejoiced. “There is a group with the Prosecutor General’s Office, another one with the Accounts chamber, one with the President administration, with the control department, and then some! Maybe even offended mothers will set up their body.”
“Do you mean that the facilities will be ready on time under all that sort of control?”
“Surely!” exclaimed Simeon Vainshtok.
“When?”
“In due time!” Mr Vainshtok appeared pleased with his reply.
I’ve never heard a more comprehensive answer, apart from the case when a submarine captain visited President Putin here, in Sochi a couple of years ago, and when asked “What was the depth the submarine reached?” replied “The due one.”
Mr Vainshtok confessed that the pilot analysis of the facilities the contractors had kept their eye on, was surprising.
“Three projects were audited, and they all turned out over-estimated,” he told me. “They say The Olympics will grab a third of the year GDP. But in reality the facilities can be made cheaper. Cheaper!”
Mr Vainshtok seemed to be amazed at what he said.
At this, spending on enhancing ecological security will be increased, according to Mr Vainshtok.
“We are building something that seems to have no connection with the Olympics! There has been planned a sewerage system and a range for hard waste!”
Obviously, this could not appeal to a person in charge of such a large-scale building, but there was no way out for Mr Vainshtok. When asked which methods his corporation would use addressing the problems of the people who would refuse to sell their land and premises, needed for expanding the Olympic area, whatever the price (even the market one, as the government pledges), Mr Vainshtok asked, “Refuse? They will have to surrender, even if they refuse!”
The Olimpstroy corporation turned out to have announced a tender among independent land brokers.
“15 or 17 have already been selected,” confessed Mr Vainshtok. “Say, it will be proposed to people to sell their land for the current market price. Say, some will refuse. There will definitely be people to refuse. And in this case they have the right to appeal to court (it’s the people who enjoy this right, not the Olimpstroy corporation. – A. K.). Compromise will be sought (I can imagine it. – A.K.). The court will set the price – and that’s all! This will be the final figure! The land will be sold.”
As far as I could understand, this sum can be less than the first bid.
Andrei Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 08, 2008
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