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Misuse of Public Funds

It is a universally accepted truth in Russia that the heads of many public funds habitually (to divert) trillions of rubles away from the stated purpose into lucrative deals for personal gain.

Over the first 10 months of this year, the Accounts Chamber, a watchdog of the State Duma, (to reveal) that nearly 1.8 trillion rubles, were not used for their designated purposes.

The auditors (to find) that nearly every fund was not using its money as it was supposed to. For instance, the Moscow branch of Russia's Pension Fund (to buy) a building for about 2 billion rubles, (to spend) 11.5 billion rubles on its renovation and repair, and (to pay) another 6 billion rubles to an intermediary for "selecting the building, preparing the necessary documents, and obtaining the consent of the parties concerned." The Pension Fund (to misuse) more than 660 billion rubles despite the fact that people in some regions were left without pension payments for up to three months.

Many public funds (to set) up their own banks with charter capital running into hundreds of billions of rubles.

In spite of the obvious violations of regulations, all these operations cannot be put down as embezzlement without court rulings, and the violators are unlikely to be sued.

Misappropriations from extrabudgetary funds (to encourage) not only by people with a particular mentality and by a lack of adequate actions on the part of law-enforcement agencies, but also by the very system through which financial resources (to flow) from top to bottom. State extrabudgetary funds (to act) as an intermediary that collects payments and remits them to the recipients. Thus, they (to tempt) to "invest" the money in lucrative fast-yielding deals.

There would probably have been fewer cases of embezzlement and misuse of assets if public funds had initially been granted legal rights to earn money by, for example, transacting in securities and foreign-exchange valuables, and making short-term deposits in banks. So far the funds only (to have) a list of operations barred to them.

Words you may need:

misuse n злоупотребление

universally accepted общепринятый

habitually adv обычно

divert v отвлекать, отводить

lucrative adj прибыльный, выгодный, доходный

personal gain личная выгода

Accounts Chamber Счетная палата

designated purposes указанные (запланированные) цели

consent n согласие

violation n нарушение

embezzlement n растрата

court ruling постановление суда

sue v искать в суде, преследовать в судебном порядке

misappropriation n незаконное присвоение, растрата

remit v переводить (средства)

recipient n получатель

fast-yielding deals сделки, быстро приносящие прибыль

valuables n ценности

bar v запрещать