The halls of the Kurgan Court were thick with the scent of old paper and the tension of a scandal. There, the city's finest investigators and lawyers gathered to dissect the fraudulent dealings of one Araik Zakoyan, a businessman from Chelyabinsk who promised a highway but delivered a disaster.

I stood amidst the crowd as the witnesses—former souls from the 'Kurganavtodor' office—took the stand to recount the misery they beheld. These men, once tasked with overseeing the works in the Shadrinsky district, spoke of a road so wretched it seemed the work of a madman.

First to speak was Mr. Viktor Baumayster, a gentleman of advancing years. He had been cast into this mess in the year of our Lord 2024, taking over a project that had been left abandoned after the arrest of its previous curator, one Andrei Anisimov. When the prosecutor pressed him on the state of the way, Baumayster did not mince words. He described a scene of utter desolation: gaping pits and asphalt shattered like cheap porcelain. In some quarters, the pavement vanished entirely, leaving a three-hundred-metre stretch of mire that would swallow a carriage whole upon the first sign of rain.

Baumayster recounted how he saw laborers toiling on pipes and footpaths, yet there were no papers to be found—no accounts, no signatures, nothing but the sweat of men trying to make amends for money already pocketed in 2023. The curator had sought a meeting with Zakoyan, but the contractor remained as elusive as a pickpocket in a fog. In the end, the contract was torn asunder, with Baumayster concluding that these Chelyabinsk fellows had nary a clue how to lay a proper road.

Then came Mr. Dmitry Gribanov, a man who had served as the chief of repairs. He had been dispatched by his superior, Mr. Gontsov, to inspect the works before the contract was severed. What Gribanov found was a sight to make a sturdy man weep.

"Like a scene after a bombardment!" he declared to the court. The road was a ruin. Geotextile fabrics protruded from the cracks like skeletal fingers, and the asphalt lay in sporadic patches, as if thrown by a careless hand.

Gribanov, digging deeper, examined the reinforced concrete pipes. They were a mismatched lot, with joints that leaked like a sieve. He ordered the surface to be cut open, only to find that the layers were too thin and the rubble was fouled with common soil—a cardinal sin in the art of road-building. The contractor's men promised to mend these faults, but it was too little, too late.

Now, the law catches up with them. Zakoyan stands accused of fraud, embezzlement, and the greasy business of bribery. The sum of the plunder—amounting to some 142 million rubles—is a king's ransom. While Zakoyan has confessed to the bribes, his solicitors maintain that the rest is a misunderstanding of the facts. Meanwhile, a new contractor has been summoned to clear away the wreckage and build a road fit for a gentleman's carriage.