The Moscow city government has misspent up to 215 billion rubles ($7.3 billion) in the transportation sector, the Audit Chamber said on Friday.
Auditor Sergei Ryabukhin said the amount was 17 billion rubles down on the original estimate of 232 billion rubles announced in December following a preliminary probe into the effectiveness of government spending in 2008-10.
The probe was ordered by Moscow's new mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, in October.
Ryabukhin said 10.8 billion rubles were diverted over a period of three years to subsidize the operations of the Moscow city government airline Atlant-Soyuz (later renamed Moskva) and make fictitious purchases of airplanes.
This is 3.8 billion rubles up on the original estimate of 7 billion, he added.
About 59 billion rubles was misspent in unauthorized budget investment on projects that were not part of Moscow's official investment program.
"These funds were not stolen, but were spent in violation of existing regulations," Ryabukhin said.
MOSCOW, February 4 (RIA Novosti)
