Investigating bodies of Moscow Main Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee have launched a criminal case over frauds committed by officials of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) and federal state unitary enterprise Center of engineer and technical support and communications of the same service in concluding state contracts on manufacturing and supply of electronic convict monitoring equipment (part 4 of article 159 of the RF Criminal Code).

According to investigators, officials of the Federal Penitentiary Service acted within implementation of resolutions of the RF Government on manufacturing and supply of electronic convict monitoring devices for the needs of penitentiary system. Breaking the current legislation, the accused refused from the open tender and concluded a number of stat contracts between themselves acting in the interests of Center of engineer and technical support and communications controlled by them in order to get rid of competitors. The officials of FSIN were aware that at the moment when the first state contract was concluded in November 2010, the Center did not have production equipment, buildings or premises to house production facilities. This in turn did not allow creating finished production cycle of electronic monitoring devices in Samara branch. In fact the most part of manufacturing the devices was performed by outside organizations involved by Center of engineer and technical support and communications. This way the accused made the price of the devices go up, but reconciled that they would purchase them at the price state in the state contracts.

Due to illegal refuse to hold open tender on the supply of electronic monitoring equipment and influence on the pricing the real cost of the equipment exceeded 1 billion 650 million rubles. As a result of deliberate overstating of need in electronic monitoring equipment (late last year from 23,900 purchased sets of devices the penitentiary inspectorates used only 9,375 sets) the officials of FSIN managed to get hold of this money which caused especially large-scale damage to the state.

It should be noted that the devices lacked the elements processing GLONASS signals. In fact the devices could not be used according to their intended purpose as the information coming from so called bracelets was false.

At present investigators are carrying out a number of investigating operations to find all the persons involved in the crime. Investigation is ongoing.