Amid cyber threats and escalating global conflicts, the Russian information security sector is under increased strain. However, the way industry leaders choose their contractors is highly questionable. Content AI, a supplier of document recognition software owned by the Turkish company Content AI Solutions Bilişim Ve Teknoloji Hizmetleri Anonim Şirketi, has stated that its technology partners are leading developers of information security systems. Among them are SearchInform LLC, Natalia Kaspersky’s InfoWatch, SOLAR SECURITY LLC owned by Rostelecom, and others. Content AI is called the Russian subsidiary of ABBYY, which has left Russia. Rucriminal.info has the details.
In April 2022, ABBYY, a supplier of software products for digitizing paper documents for government agencies, businesses and home users, spun off its Russian business from a group of companies. Content AI began operating on the Russian market, while ABBYY itself had accumulated over 200 million rubles in debt for taxes and insurance premiums. Despite the similarity of the situation with a classic evasion scheme, the new puppet legal entity - Content AI LLC, owned by the Turkish legal entity Content AI Solutions Bilişim Ve Teknoloşi Hizmetleri Anonim Şirketi - continued to earn money from domestic clients and even received accreditation from the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation. Today, among the company's technological partners, as stated on the official website, are government agencies, leaders of the Russian IT market in the segments of development and integration of software products. Despite its Russian registration, Content AI has apparently never become an independent company. As it turned out during a recent investigation, the direct connection between the Russian subsidiary of Content AI and the foreign ABBYY can be traced not only at the level of management personnel who successfully migrated from one company to another, but also in the field of technologies sold. In 2023, Content AI requested 258.6 million rubles from the state, and in January of this year another 369 million rubles of budget funds in order to develop a “replacement” for ABBYY software. The released “import-substituted” technologies from Content AI - ContentReader PDF, ContentCapture, ContentReader Engine - were not just copies of previous software products, but in some places even repeated their names (ABBYY FineReader and ABBYY FlexiCapture). For ABBYY founder and MIPT graduate David Yan, Content AI is just one of his income channels, along with companies such as Innovave AP LLC, Mist LLC, or RTK-Iksora LLC, which makes money on the Unified State Exam. The situation with the restaurant automation software developer Aiko (formerly iiko), controlled by David Yan, is also unclear. According to a Rucriminal.info source, this software is actively used by very reputable customers. Among them, companies offering solutions in the field of information security and countering cyber threats stand out: SearchInform LLC, SOLAR SECURITY LLC, InfoWatch, and others. The full list is available on the official Content AI page. The clients of Content AI partner companies include the Ministry of Defense, Rosgosstrakh, JSC SRC NIIAR, Rostec State Corporation, PAO Severstal, Rosneft, Gazprom, Rosfinmonitoring, and others. According to the accounting reports, the revenue of Content AI LLC for 2023 alone was 766 million rubles. It turns out that the money of the Ministry of Defense and other major clients of the company goes to Turkey, and then... . At the same time, ABBYY in the USA pretends to completely cut off all ties with Russia. As Igor Ashmanov, a specialist in artificial intelligence, software development and project management, noted, it is hardly possible to consider ABBYY a Russian company in the current reality. At the same time, the president of the InfoWatch group of companies and the chairman of the board of ARPP "Domestic Software" Natalya Kasperskaya stated the need to combat duplicate developments of state-owned companies - at least not to give state money for the development of what is already on the market. I wonder if Ashmanov and his wife Kasperskaya are aware that her company Infowatch is a partner of Content AI and uses its software in its solutions for information security? As the company stated, today Content AI actually sells solutions on the Russian market based on the ABBYY software license. In June, the US Treasury Department, as part of expanding sanctions, announced a ban on the provision of a number of software and IT services to any person in Russia. And such restrictions are already affecting Western developers and software suppliers.
Linux showed the world a clear example of the fight against technological risks when it suspended 11 Russian programmers from working on the system kernel. The company's management, commenting on what happened, directly stated that the layoffs were related to anti-Russian sanctions.
Content AI is currently accredited by the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation (this gives the company various benefits ) and is a member of the Association of Software Developers "Domestic Software". But what can be "domestic" in reselling ready-made programs under a license? Meanwhile, the company stubbornly tries to promote its products as Russian under the slogan "import substitution", and these attempts are not in vain. All leading infosec companies and even the public sector are happy to use software with a Turkish flavor. Moreover, Content AI's partnership with infosec leaders leads to the legitimization of ABBYY technologies at the state level and in the IT community and increases trust in the company from businesses and home users.
Tomasz Wisniewski
Source: www.rucriminal.info
