>>> The information on the 47 billion rubles that the state corporation Roskosmos promised to give to the state in the summer was removed from the Russian public budget. We are talking about the receivables of Roscosmos before the budget for incomes received by its predecessor, the Federal Space Agency (FKA), from foreign counterparts, according to the data of the Accounts Chamber. In June, the Finance Ministry laid in the "other non-tax revenues" 46.88 billion rubles. due to "repayment of debts of past years under international treaties of the Federal Space Agency," was reported in an explanatory note to the summer amendments to the budget; this amount is taken into account in the current law on the budget for 2017.

But already in August Roskosmos asked the Ministry of Finance to exclude these 47 billion rubles. from the forecast of incomes, it is said in the conclusion of the Accounting Chamber for the October amendments to the budget (adopted in the second reading by the Duma on Wednesday, October 25). The Accounting Chamber does not give any reasons for this decision of Roskosmos. The Ministry of Finance and the state corporation did not inform the Ministry of Finance or the state corporation about the adjusted assessment of revenues, the auditors note: "To conclude that other revenues from the non-tax revenues of the federal budget will be retained through the repayment of arrears of previous years under international treaties of the Federal Space Agency in the amount of 46 , 88 billion rubles. does not seem possible".

As a result, the Accounting Chamber believes that "there are risks of shortfall" of the promised 46.88 billion rubles. from Roskosmos. This is indirectly indicated by a decrease in the Ministry of Finance forecast for other non-tax revenues in 2017 by 30.5 billion rubles.

In the privacy mode

It is known that there are closed expenses in the budget, but it turns out that incomes can also be classified. In the conclusion of the Accounts Chamber for summer amendments, the agency's position on 47 billion rubles. from "Roskosmos" was reflected in the secret part; the representative of the Accounts Chamber and the press service of the Ministry of Finance declined to comment. The press service of Roskosmos did not respond to the request for comment, which was sent on October 16.

The draft law on amendments to the budget of 2017 and the materials to it do not provide details of other non-tax revenues, including the return of debts of Roskosmos, the Accounting Chamber said. At the same time in the summer amendments such detailing was (the corresponding document is available in the Duma base), as it is in the bill on the budget for 2018-2020. The Ministry of Finance nowhere explains the reasons for the reduction in the volume of information in the draft amendments to the autumn, did not pay attention to it, and the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes in its opinion on the amendments. The head of the committee, Andrei Makarov, did not respond to RBC's request for comment.

This is not the only example of reducing the amount of information disclosed in the "autumn" budget cycle: previously the government decided not to publish the expected volumes of dividend income from specific state companies for the next three years. Transparency of the draft budget is "unsatisfactory", they write in their joint conclusion by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Gaidar, about "the continuation of an extremely negative tendency to reduce the transparency of the budgetary process", also say the experts of the economics department of Moscow State University.

Takes a lot from the budget, gives little

Roskosmos, the assignee of the Federal Space Agency, abolished on January 1, 2016, is one of the chief administrators of budget revenues, and the amount of its income from foreign economic activities under the Budget Code is subject to accounting in the federal budget revenues. In 2013-2016, Roskosmos transferred to the budget 13.4 billion rubles. (including 6.1 billion rubles last year), before that there was almost no revenue, according to the data of the Federal Treasury. On October 5, before the amendments to the budget of 2017, the Ministry of Finance planned to receive from Roskosmos in 2017 a record 52.3 billion rubles. (open data of the "Electronic Budget" system), but now this amount is questionable (the press service of the Ministry of Finance did not answer the question about the updated forecast of revenues). So far, only 7.7 billion rubles have been received. And in 2018 the Ministry of Finance pawns less than 1 billion rubles. receipts from Roskosmos, and no refunds of receivables are planned, follows from the government's calculations of revenues for 2018-2020.

At the same time, Roskosmos, as the main administrator of budgetary funds, received 201 billion rubles from the budget in 2016 alone, this year will receive 138.7 billion rubles. (according to the consolidated budgetary list of the Ministry of Finance on October 1, an open part of the costs).

In 2016, Roskosmos recorded revenues from international space activities amounting to 25.2 billion rubles., Follows from its annual report, the profit amounted to 4.4 billion rubles. Roskosmos has agreements on cooperation with India, Israel, the European Space Agency, etc., but the main source of income is a contract with the American NASA, signed in 1994 (the last years NASA pays Roscosmos for shipping American astronauts to ISS). Only in the last two years, from October 2015 to October 2017, Roskosmos received from NASA $ 568 million (32 billion rubles at current rates), and since 2008 - $ 3.55 billion, it follows from the data of the government website state procurement of the USA.

Also, Roskosmos is one of the world leaders in the market of commercial launches: for example, it supplies rocket carriers for the French operator Arianespace. Arianespace's debt to Roskosmos in the amount of € 300 million (about 20 billion rubles.) Was frozen in France for two years on claims of former Yukos shareholders, but in June of this year Roskosmos got rid of her arrest.

Elimination with violations

Funds in the amount of 46.88 billion rubles. were established and reflected in the budgetary accounting and financial statements of the Federal Space Agency as a receivable to the federal budget based on the results of the audit of the Accounting Chamber "Verification of liquidation measures for the abolition of the Federal Space Agency," the Chamber said. We are talking about the debt to pay the "financial result" to the budget under the ongoing contracts of Roskosmos, the annual report of the Accounting Chamber states.

Based on the materials of this control measure, a prosecutor's examination was carried out, the Accounting Chamber noted on September 22; the prosecutor's office found violations in the actions of the liquidation commission of the Federal Space Agency (the General Prosecutor's Office did not respond to RBC's request). The liquidation commission of Roskosmos was established in January 2016 and was originally supposed to complete its work by the middle of last year, but the terms of its work were extended until April 2018. The former chairman of the liquidation commission, Denis Lyskov, was fined 30,000 rubles in May 2017. Meshchansky District Court of Moscow (the file here) for failure to comply with the requirements of the Accounting Chamber - auditors in 2016 checked the international activities of the Federal Space Agency and ordered to improve the policy of recording revenues and expenditures under long-term international contracts, as well as reflect on the balance sheet receivables from foreign economic activities and accounts payable on amounts due to the federal budget. Lyskov is now headed by Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Roskosmos, he transferred RBC through a representative that he will not comment on these issues, since he no longer leads the liquidation commission.

Black box

"The transformation of the Federal Space Agency into the state corporation Roskosmos was due to the desire to ensure the absolute closure of this structure," said independent expert on space exploration Vadim Lukashevich. "If I ordered the work as an agency Roskosmos, I concluded contracts, determined the cost of procurement, and the industry acted as a contractor, but now it is absolutely hermetic organization, which acts both as the contractor and the customer who accepts the work." This is a black box and an inefficient structure, the expert believes.

Nobody has ever publicly and officially spoken about how the funds received from launching space vehicles and astronauts should be distributed, says the scientific director of the Space Policy Institute Ivan Moiseev, RBC. In his view, some of this money goes to Roskosmos-controlled enterprises, some of which appear to be small, goes directly to Roskosmos, and part of it goes to the budget. But what documents regulate it - it's hard to say, the expert adds. Any opacity in this area is harmful, Moiseyev said. According to him, it arose in part because space was always a closed sphere, and this affected both the mode of operation of enterprises and the psychology of their leaders - they have no incentive to do anything open, otherwise there will be a lot of criticism .

The documents regulating the distribution of funds from international treaties are closed, and Roskosmos and the Ministry of Finance can treat different positions in the same way, Ivan Moiseyev said.