MOSCOW. April 24 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Audit Chamber has exposed violations in arranging military-technical cooperation with other nations, a competent source in the chamber told Interfax-Military News Agency on Thursday.
"Results of inspections by the Audit Chamber show that legal acts regulating military-technical cooperation with foreign nations are violated in some cases by both federal executive bodies and participants in military-technical cooperation," the source said.
In particular, the Russian government has been including military-purpose products funded from extra-budget sources in the state defense order section devoted to international military- technical cooperation.
At the same time, the law "Concerning the State Defense Order" says the funding of the state defense order is provided from the federal budget through transferring funds to the state customer, the source noted.
"The share of extra-budget funding in the framework of the state defense order has been growing annually and exceeded 80 percent of the total volume of allocations in 2002," he noted.
"The government and Finance Ministry effectively ignore the provision of the Russian president's decree assigning the functions of the state customer in the military-technical cooperation sphere to the Russian Committee for Military- Technical Cooperation with Foreign States. Results of the Audit Chamber's checks show that the Committee for Military-Technical Cooperation with Foreign States did not act as the state customer as far as funding of the state defense order in the military- technical cooperation sphere was concerned in 2001 and 2002," the source said.
Having summed up results of the checks, the Audit Chamber has sent proposals to the Russian government, suggesting amendments to several federal laws and other measures to correct the international military-technical cooperation process, the source concluded.