RUSSIAN OFFICIAL CORRUPTION.

Northern Advocate, 3 October 1913, Page 3

RUSSIAN OFFICIAL CORRUPTION.

UNFORTUNATE CONVICTS EXPLOITED. M. Kharitonoff, the Russian Imperial Comptroller, is now personally prosecuting an inquiry into the financial administration of the Amur railway. It is. alleged that on the western poction of the new line there are defalcations amounting to £2,000,000. Some 12,000 convicts, including a not inconsiderable percentage of political offenders, have been engaged for the.last five years in the construction of the railway, and it is stated that among other frauds, these convict labourers have 'been entered on the pay-sheets as paid workmen. Another official inquiry is about to be made into the administration of the naval dockyards at Nicolaieff, in which, it is alleged, gross irregularities have been brought to light. The task of the commission of inquiry is to verify the results of the £850,000 expended within the last two and ahalf years in the Admiralty yards in the port on the Bug. The director-in-chief of the construction of ,the new Black Sea Dreadnoughts, ii. Dmitrieff, was a few days ago dismissed from his post in Nicolaieff. It is mentioned, incidentally, that he was jja receipt of a salary of £12,000 per 'annum.

Official peculation in Russia is practically as general as ever, notwithstanding the amazing revelations in what are known as the "Intendantski Skandals," with which the newspapers have been filled during the last four years. Those commissariat frauds amounted in the aggregate to something like 35 millions of pounds, and some 600 officers and officials of all grades have been convicted and punished; but the Augean stable remains uncleansed.