Source: www.rucriminal.info
As Rucriminal.info has learned, the structures of AFK Sistema are preparing to cut up the next budget billions under the guise of creating a global video surveillance system throughout Russia.
The Ministry of Digital Development proposed to create a unified video surveillance system for 12 billion rubles, which would cover 5 million cameras throughout the country and the main task of the unified video monitoring system would be the ability to search for persons on the wanted list. Here are alimony payers, debtors, those hiding from mobilization or conscription for military service, in general, all categories of citizens who do not want to meet with government officials and credit organizations.
The main executors of this venture will be structures affiliated with AFK Sistema. It should be noted that such use of public money through so-called IT projects for AFK Sistema is far from the first and not the only one.
In 2021, the scandalous company Sitronics won a tender from the Moscow City Hall to install 12 thousand cameras in schools for 2.9 billion rubles. “Sitronics” is exactly that subsidiary of AFK, which the owner of Sistema, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, has repeatedly promoted as a high-tech company, supposedly it does a lot of developments and produces. But in reality, everything turned out to be far from being so, Sitronics and other similar AFK projects are just banal intermediaries through which the necessary components, servers, computers, video systems, etc. are purchased abroad. And then resold for 10-15 times more expensive state needs.
It was the unprofitable Sitronics that in 2012 was parked with another subsidiary of AFK RTI, at that time the third most profitable in Sistema - the RTI group of companies sat on the state defense order and carried out government contracts for the construction of radar systems for missile attack warning systems and the creation National State Defense Control Center on Frunzenskaya Embankment. Thanks to huge government investments in RTI, Sitronics was then saved from bankruptcy, and this resulted in numerous criminal cases due to fraud with state defense procurement money. The National Defense Control Center (NDCC) was never put on combat duty, the money was all stolen, and not everything is so good with the Voronezh VZG radar stations, which Yevtushenkov calls “uyo….mi”. They are far from the stated technical requirements, and the loudly declared continuous radar field exists only on paper. According to a Rucriminal.info source, there is no Center and no working early warning system.
The scheme for enriching the structures of AFK Sistema through such projects is also interesting.
“There is a serious, fueled lobby in the government agencies, people, officials who are on the payroll of the AFK (their names are known) - these are high-ranking managers in the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Digital Development, in the very apparatus of the government and the presidential administration and, of course, the Moscow mayor’s office. They are developing various federal targeted projects (federal targeted projects) and programs that are tailored to the structure of the AFC,” the source notes.
Under the guise of a public-private partnership, with the help of federal programs for financing vital projects, AFK receives loans on very preferential terms, through which, as a private company, it makes its “contribution” in the form of attracting money from private investors and acquires, for example, necessary video systems. And then, again at the expense of state money, it pays “investors” extra interest for the allocated investments, a significant monetary difference received from the inflated purchase price. To put it simply, the state could buy and install a surveillance camera for $200-250 in a video control system, but thanks to the efforts of the AFK, it spends $3,000-4,000 thousand apiece. To put it even more simply, the state allocates 12 billion for the necessary project, but in reality, the amount will be used twice as much. Of this, 1 billion worth of work will be done, and the rest will be put into pockets. This is some funny arithmetic.
Don’t have a hundred rubles, but have a hundred purchased officials.
The lion's share of such income remains abroad, in this sense, Vladimir Yevtushenkov has good experience since the times of the USSR, when, as an agent of the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR (now the SVR), he hid the so-called party money abroad.
Andrey Tatarov
Source: www.rucriminal.info