Ramzan Kadyrov decorated with "Golden Brush"

Laureates of the award "Golden Brush-2011" have been announced in Russia; it is given for most unreasonable budget expenditures. The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov became one of the award winners. The reason for awarding was the fact that this spring, the state procurement website placed information on buying expensive cars of foreign brands for the Republic's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA).

Earlier, the "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in April, the MIA of the Chechen Republic announced a tender for supply of cars of foreign and domestic brands for the amount of 113 million roubles. According to the order, the Chechen MIA needed 15 cars Mercedes E350, two jeeps Toyota Land Cruiser 200, Porsche Cayenne and Toyota Camry, 20 cars Ford Focus 2.0 Sedan Titanium, and about 100 different models of cars produced by the Russian "AvtoVAZ".

The idea of the award "Golden Brush" appeared after the scandal when in late 2008, 32 million roubles were to be spent for the modernization of the offices of Valentina Matvienko, Saint Petersburg Governor. At that time, 12,794 roubles were to be paid for a usual toilet brush. Valentina Matvienko became the first winner of the award invented by Saint Petersburg's "Youth Yabloko".

This year, Marina Fokina, CEO of Saint Petersburg "International Centre for Festivals and Celebrations" (MCFC), and Vasily Yakemenko, the head of the "Rosmolodezh" (Federal Agency on Youth Affairs), are among the award winners.