New education in education
Another corruption scandal related to the national project “Education”. The Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Moscow Region was arrested for receiving a kickback when purchasing expensive equipment for schools.
Reports of the discovery of one or another corruption scheme in the school education system appear with unenviable regularity.
Bronsteinfor example, he was caught receiving a kickback from the general director of JSC Trading House Prosveshchenie-Region Irina Savenkova
By decision of the Tverskoy District Court, Bronshtein was sent into custody for two months. Savenkova was also arrested.
For contracts totaling 742 million 370 thousand rubles, she “unfastened” Bronstein 25 million in cash – apparently in order not to “leave traces.”
But still, somewhere the accomplices “inherited”…
The end of the “Union of Sword and Ploughshare”…
During the search, significant amounts of money and luxury items were found in Bronstein’s apartment.
It is worth noting that Ilya Mikhailovich Bronstein became the first deputy of the government quite recently – in April of this year. And before that, for almost twenty years he worked in the field of public education. He went from a simple history teacher to the Minister of Education of the Moscow Region, clearly demonstrating that in the teaching field you can make a considerable fortune, if, of course, you approach the matter wisely.
And there is no doubt that Bronstein is a smart, resourceful person, and not even without an artistic streak: once at a corporate party he portrayed the founder of the “Union of Sword and Ploughshare” Ostap Bender, who, as you know, did not shun extortion from the local bourgeoisie under kind of helping children…
Another interesting fact: Bronstein was fired from his position two weeks before his arrest. Apparently, the Moscow Region government guessed that he was “in development” and decided to get rid of the unscrupulous official in advance. This made it possible to get rid of searches and “mask shows” in government corridors…
However, long before the accusations of extortion and lobbying for the interests of unscrupulous entrepreneurs, teachers in the Moscow region expressed dissatisfaction with the activities of Bronstein, who intensively carried out “optimization” in the region, accompanied by the unnecessary merger and closure of educational institutions.
Get out of the bureaucratic class!
It is interesting that last year, another prominent figure in Russian education was arrested Pavel Kuzmin. According to the investigation, by order of Kuzmin, budgetary funds were transferred from the account of the Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Further Professional Education “Academy of the Ministry of Education of Russia” to the account of the companies “OptiPro” LLC and “IT Solutions” LLC, allegedly for “providing services for the development of education quality management mechanisms in the area of ”Provision system professional development of teaching staff.” In fact, law enforcement officers believe, these companies did not provide any services, and the contracts were fictitious, as were the certificates of work allegedly performed.
This whole scam was carried out back in 2022, but the official who headed the department of training, professional development and social security of teaching staff of the Ministry of Education was “accepted” on December 29, 2023, almost at the sound of the chimes.”
Just like Bronshain, he was active until the very end, making speeches at various symposiums and forums, and then suddenly abruptly quit. Exactly two weeks after leaving his post, Kuzmin was handcuffed.
But in all the news reports about the arrest of a federal official, the word “former” appeared before the name of Kuzmin’s position. So-so, of course, an attempt to save the honor of the uniform, but still… By the way, as in the case of Bronstein, the decision to take Kuzmin into custody was adopted in the Tverskoy Court of Moscow.
It is worth noting that after New Year’s reports about the arrest of the head of the department of the Ministry of Education, there is no information about him or the progress of the case. Whether he is in custody or another, milder measure of restraint was chosen for him is unknown… Some telegram channels hint that Kuzmin has high-ranking patrons who can hush up this matter.
Isn’t the lesson in vain?
If we talk about corruption in the highest echelons of the Ministry of Education, we cannot help but recall the sensational case of the Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova. The crimes for which the official has already been sentenced to five years of forced labor are like two peas in a pod to those that Kuzmin is charged with: payments under fictitious employment contracts and additional agreements of budget funds. The beneficiary of this scheme was Rakova’s common-law husband Arthur Stetsenko and 12 more people who received unearned money. The cynicism of the situation was that the funds were laundered through the federal program “Teacher of the Future”, implemented within the framework of the national project “Education”. What future can there be for Russian education with such a corrupt new formation!? A rhetorical question… On March 19 of this year, the court sentenced Marina Rakova to five years in prison.
It seems that the “cleansing” in the ranks of Ministry of Education officials will not end there. Criminal cases are also periodically initiated locally.
Questions will probably appear in the near future to the heads of the ministries of education of such regions as Buryatia, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Arkhangelsk, Bryansk and Novgorod regions.
It was in these territories that a cartel conspiracy was discovered in the amount of 275 million rubles in the supply of educational and computer equipment as part of the implementation of the national project “Education”. Several companies took part in the conspiracy: Sigma LLC, Imperium LLC, A1 LLC and another individual entrepreneur…
Of course, all these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Officials from the ministry cannot be prohibited from being “friends” with representatives of certain business structures. Therefore, one should not be surprised that a computer purchased by a private owner for “his own” from the “first available” seller turns out to be sometimes three to four times cheaper than the one that officials purchased for budget money from a “trusted supplier.” So law enforcement agencies will have enough work in the field of education for a long time.
One hope is that pedagogy officials will finally begin to learn lessons from the sad experience of their predecessors.
