Russia's state Audit Chamber has found that the "design work for its 2018 stadia has been over-priced" by as much as $88M, according to INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL. The audit of seven stadiums found that the real value of the "design, planning and projection" works was $80M -- not the $171M contracted in '12-13. The investigation into stadium design costs and budget was "for the stadiums in Kaliningrad, Samara, Saransk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod." Seven state contracts to the value of 5.8B rubles were awarded. Five of the seven contract pitches were won by construction company FSUE. The audit chamber's cost consultants said that the "largest overestimation of design work is at the stadium in Nizhny Novgorod," which should have cost an estimated $7.2M. The contract awarded was for $26M, almost four times as much. In Rostov-on-Don and Kaliningrad contracts of 892.9M rubles and 849.7M rubles were awarded -- "about three times higher than the state auditor believes the real costs should be" (INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL, 6/23).
