Oh, snap. Radio Free Europe has pulled from various reports the news that the head of Russia's Federal Service of Financial and Budget Oversight, Sergei Pavlenko, has admitted that the final price tag of the Sochi Games will be somewhere between $13 and $18 billion. This is due to, as the article notes "greedy contractors and sloppy management," including rising costs to "prevent buildings from sinking into the ground." (Here's a Russian language report on the same topic.)
As you might recall, the company in charge of the build, Olimpstroi, is on its 3rd chief in four years and Russian president Dimitrii Medvedev ordered an official probe into corruption surrounding the Olympic build earlier this year. Not to bombard you with links, but corruption in Russian build projects can only be described as "endemic."
Just a bit of clarification on that final price tag of "$13 to $18 billion;" RIA-Novosti, a news mouthpiece for the state, previously stated that the cost would be north of $30 billion dollars in at least two articles. Therefore, it's hard to get a handle on what, exactly, that 13-18 price tag refers to. I noted yesterday that the operating cost of the Games would be about $2 billion US. My guess, just from experience, is that the above price tag refers to Olympic specific building projects and that the missing $15+ billion is considered as 'infrastructure improvements' that would have been done regardless of the Olympics. That, of course, is dubious.
So this is all well and good and it's always interesting when someone in Russian government speaks out against construction. The problem, from where I'm sitting, is that this is unlikely to produce interesting news; odds are that this minister is not going to be fired and odds are the building will continue as it has. Mr. Pavlenko is not going to be disappeared for saying this; rather, he'll probably get a pat on the back from president Medvedev. Generic complaints of corruption/fraud/waste against big companies, so long as the president and prime minister have sufficient distance from them, is more than likely welcomed by those in power. Broad campaigns against corruption are as old as, well, birch trees in Russia. Shit, it's how this guy ended up in jail
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