The State Duma recently approved a bill on preventing conflicts of interest in public procurement – the Ministry of Finance has allegedly been waiting for this for five years. But the government agency itself has been ordering analytics services for at least nine years from a company owned by a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Finance Evsey Gurvich and employee of a government agency under the Ministry of Finance Alexander Andryakov.
According to Octagonthe firm of economists Evsey Gurvich and Alexander Andryakov received more than 250 million rubles from the department. The situation when government contracts and subsidies are received by council members from the authorities under which they are located represents a conflict of interest. Essentially, it is a euphemism for words such as “cronyism”, “nepotism”, and can be a type of corrupt abuse. At the same time, the Ministry of Finance has a “Regulation on the Public Council”, which contains rules on preventing selfish interest in the work of the council.
74-year-old Evsey Gurvich is a Soviet and Russian economist, scientific director of the Economic Expert Group, member of the Expert Council on Monetary Policy and Legal Regulation of the Financial Market under the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market. To the Public Council under the Ministry of Finance he came in again in 2011, by order of the then Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation and the head of the financial department Alexey Kudrin and served as Deputy Chairman from 2011–2017. Back in the 1990s, Gurvich, together with the current senior researcher The Center for Budget Analysis and Forecasting of the Research Financial Institute (NIFI) of the Ministry of Finance, Alexander Andryakov and a group of economists, registered the Economic Expert Group CJSC (EEG, transformed into LLC in 2016). The company has been headed by Andryakov for over 10 years.
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Gurvich owns 36 percent of the company, Andryakov – 16 percent. Since 2016, the Economic Expert Group has received orders from the Ministry of Finance for more than 200 million rubles (the last time it won the tender in March), and since 2013, CJSC EEG has received about 60 million rubles more from the Ministry of Finance. Judging by the data from the Kontur.Focus database, EEG has no other sources of income besides the Ministry of Finance. At the end of 2021, the company’s revenue amounted to 20.1 million rubles, net profit was brought to a symbolic figure of 1 thousand rubles, which in essence will not provide income tax to the budgets of the Russian Federation and Moscow. Interestingly, Andryakov personally also received tenders RSUH for the coordination and implementation of a general development program for students “Financial Genius Club”.
The same standard title of the order that EEG regularly receives from the Ministry of Finance is “Analytical and research support for the participation of the Russian Federation in the activities of international organizations and forums.” Typically, as part of an order, the company is expected to produce 10–20 research papers on the topics of crises in foreign economies, the macroeconomic consequences of climate change, analysis of the implementation of foreign sanctions against the Russian Federation, various aspects of the activities of the OECD and G20, and others.
It is noteworthy that when 10 years ago such “inconvenient” government procurements came into view analytical work from the Higher School of Economics from the Ministry of Economic Development (founder and then rector of the university Yaroslav Kuzminov – husband of the former head of the department Elvira Nabiullina), experts made excuses that it was budgetary organizations that won the tenders.
But in the case of EEG we are talking about a private company.
Octagon sent a request to the Ministry of Finance whether Gurvich informed the head of the Public Council that his company had no conflict of interest (this is required by the rules).
According to Octagonthe firm of economists Evsey Gurvich and Alexander Andryakov received more than 250 million rubles from the department. The situation when government contracts and subsidies are received by council members from the authorities under which they are located represents a conflict of interest. Essentially, it is a euphemism for words such as “cronyism”, “nepotism”, and can be a type of corrupt abuse. At the same time, the Ministry of Finance has a “Regulation on the Public Council”, which contains rules on preventing selfish interest in the work of the council.
74-year-old Evsey Gurvich is a Soviet and Russian economist, scientific director of the Economic Expert Group, member of the Expert Council on Monetary Policy and Legal Regulation of the Financial Market under the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market. To the Public Council under the Ministry of Finance he came in again in 2011, by order of the then Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation and the head of the financial department Alexey Kudrin and served as Deputy Chairman from 2011–2017. Back in the 1990s, Gurvich, together with the current senior researcher The Center for Budget Analysis and Forecasting of the Research Financial Institute (NIFI) of the Ministry of Finance, Alexander Andryakov and a group of economists, registered the Economic Expert Group CJSC (EEG, transformed into LLC in 2016). The company has been headed by Andryakov for over 10 years.
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Gurvich owns 36 percent of the company, Andryakov – 16 percent. Since 2016, the Economic Expert Group has received orders from the Ministry of Finance for more than 200 million rubles (the last time it won the tender in March), and since 2013, CJSC EEG has received about 60 million rubles more from the Ministry of Finance. Judging by the data from the Kontur.Focus database, EEG has no other sources of income besides the Ministry of Finance. At the end of 2021, the company’s revenue amounted to 20.1 million rubles, net profit was brought to a symbolic figure of 1 thousand rubles, which in essence will not provide income tax to the budgets of the Russian Federation and Moscow. Interestingly, Andryakov personally also received tenders RSUH for the coordination and implementation of a general development program for students “Financial Genius Club”.
The same standard title of the order that EEG regularly receives from the Ministry of Finance is “Analytical and research support for the participation of the Russian Federation in the activities of international organizations and forums.” Typically, as part of an order, the company is expected to produce 10–20 research papers on the topics of crises in foreign economies, the macroeconomic consequences of climate change, analysis of the implementation of foreign sanctions against the Russian Federation, various aspects of the activities of the OECD and G20, and others.
It is noteworthy that when 10 years ago such “inconvenient” government procurements came into view analytical work from the Higher School of Economics from the Ministry of Economic Development (founder and then rector of the university Yaroslav Kuzminov – husband of the former head of the department Elvira Nabiullina), experts made excuses that it was budgetary organizations that won the tenders.
But in the case of EEG we are talking about a private company.
Octagon sent a request to the Ministry of Finance whether Gurvich informed the head of the Public Council that his company had no conflict of interest (this is required by the rules).
Public expert on government procurement
The State Duma recently approved a bill on preventing conflicts of interest in public procurement – the Ministry of Finance allegedly waited for this for five years. But the government agency itself has been ordering analytics services for at least nine years from a company owned by a member of the Public…
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