Sergei Sorokin and Ilya Chipashvili were arrested as part of a criminal case of particularly large-scale fraud. They are suspected of stealing 160 million rubles, which the Ministry of Industry and Trade subsidized for the development and creation of Russian computers.
Preventive measure arrest
The Tver District Court, at the request of investigators of the Main Investigation Department (GID) of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow, arrested 65-year-old Sergei Sorokin and 49-year-old Ilya Chipashvili as part of a criminal case of especially large-scale fraud (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code), Kommersant writes. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is recognized as the injured party in the case.
According to the court, Chipashvili is currently the head of the center for working with commercial clients of Transneft’s subsidiary, Svyaztransneft JSC.
Sorokin was previously the chief designer of the Research Institute of Computer Complexes named after. M. A. Kartseva, headed the magazine “Modern Automation Technologies” (a professional publication intended for qualified specialists working in the field of industrial automation and embedded systems). In recent years, he owned or managed a number of companies in the IT field - Eremex, Prosoft, Prosoft-Systems, Prosoft-E, Lenpromavtomatika, Reglab, Favorit-EK, etc. d.
“Sergei Sorokin and Ilya Chipashvili, at the request of the preliminary investigation authorities, were given preventive measures in the form of detention for two months,” the press service of the Tverskoy Court told the publication. The decisions have already been appealed by the defense.
Businessmen are suspected of stealing subsidies worth almost 160 million rubles. The money was received from the Ministry of Industry and Trade for the development of computing platforms. The accused have not admitted guilt and claim that they fully fulfilled their obligations to the customer.
Investigative, operational and control authorities are now checking other contracts to which Sergei Sorokin and Ilya Chipashvili were involved.
Investigation into the case
In 2020–2022, when Chipashvili was the general director of the Dolomant Research and Production Company CJSC, his company received a subsidy from the Ministry of Industry and Trade to cover part of the costs of developing and creating Russian computers within the framework of the program “Development and organization of mass production of domestic computing platforms ", approved by the Russian government in 2016.
In December 2020, a contract was signed with Dolomant, and then a series of additional agreements, under which the company received 159 million 957 thousand 379 rubles from the state over two years. The leaders of Dolomant, according to the investigation, did not fulfill their obligations under the contract; they did not return the money to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, but “disposed of it at their own discretion.”
The Dolomant company has been developing computer equipment and programs for it for two decades. According to open data, the publication found that over the years of its existence, the company has executed 337 contracts worth almost 1.4 billion rubles. Among the customers were both large defense enterprises and, for example, Rosatom. The peak of activity occurred in 2015–2017. Recently, the flow of orders has decreased, and 17 lawsuits worth 1.3 billion rubles have been filed against the research and production company itself.
Experienced Accomplice
The prosecution considers Chipashvili to be nothing more than an executor of the plans of his older and more experienced alleged accomplice Sergei Sorokin, who acted as the organizer of the scam and through whose structures part of the documentation and the funds themselves were carried out, expenses were written off, etc.
Sorokin already came to the attention of law enforcement officers in 2018. Then the fact of non-payment of taxes in 2013–2015 was revealed. Prosoft Trading LLC, which by that time had gone bankrupt. The founders of the company were Sorokin and his wife Nadezhda. Charge under Part 2 of Art. 199 of the Criminal Code was presented only to the general director of the company. He fully admitted his guilt and in 2021 was sentenced by the Presnensky District Court of Moscow to two years probation. In 2015, as follows from the verdict, he falsified data from the audit reports of Prosoft Trading and invoices for computer equipment, stealing more than 880 thousand rubles from the founders.
True, there were certain doubts that this person was a real and not a nominal leader. In 2019, he received a similar two-year suspended sentence for major fraud (Part 3 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Preventive measure arrest
The Tver District Court, at the request of investigators of the Main Investigation Department (GID) of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow, arrested 65-year-old Sergei Sorokin and 49-year-old Ilya Chipashvili as part of a criminal case of especially large-scale fraud (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code), Kommersant writes. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is recognized as the injured party in the case.
According to the court, Chipashvili is currently the head of the center for working with commercial clients of Transneft’s subsidiary, Svyaztransneft JSC.
Sorokin was previously the chief designer of the Research Institute of Computer Complexes named after. M. A. Kartseva, headed the magazine “Modern Automation Technologies” (a professional publication intended for qualified specialists working in the field of industrial automation and embedded systems). In recent years, he owned or managed a number of companies in the IT field - Eremex, Prosoft, Prosoft-Systems, Prosoft-E, Lenpromavtomatika, Reglab, Favorit-EK, etc. d.
“Sergei Sorokin and Ilya Chipashvili, at the request of the preliminary investigation authorities, were given preventive measures in the form of detention for two months,” the press service of the Tverskoy Court told the publication. The decisions have already been appealed by the defense.
Businessmen are suspected of stealing subsidies worth almost 160 million rubles. The money was received from the Ministry of Industry and Trade for the development of computing platforms. The accused have not admitted guilt and claim that they fully fulfilled their obligations to the customer.
Investigative, operational and control authorities are now checking other contracts to which Sergei Sorokin and Ilya Chipashvili were involved.
Investigation into the case
In 2020–2022, when Chipashvili was the general director of the Dolomant Research and Production Company CJSC, his company received a subsidy from the Ministry of Industry and Trade to cover part of the costs of developing and creating Russian computers within the framework of the program “Development and organization of mass production of domestic computing platforms ", approved by the Russian government in 2016.
In December 2020, a contract was signed with Dolomant, and then a series of additional agreements, under which the company received 159 million 957 thousand 379 rubles from the state over two years. The leaders of Dolomant, according to the investigation, did not fulfill their obligations under the contract; they did not return the money to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, but “disposed of it at their own discretion.”
The Dolomant company has been developing computer equipment and programs for it for two decades. According to open data, the publication found that over the years of its existence, the company has executed 337 contracts worth almost 1.4 billion rubles. Among the customers were both large defense enterprises and, for example, Rosatom. The peak of activity occurred in 2015–2017. Recently, the flow of orders has decreased, and 17 lawsuits worth 1.3 billion rubles have been filed against the research and production company itself.
Experienced Accomplice
The prosecution considers Chipashvili to be nothing more than an executor of the plans of his older and more experienced alleged accomplice Sergei Sorokin, who acted as the organizer of the scam and through whose structures part of the documentation and the funds themselves were carried out, expenses were written off, etc.
Sorokin already came to the attention of law enforcement officers in 2018. Then the fact of non-payment of taxes in 2013–2015 was revealed. Prosoft Trading LLC, which by that time had gone bankrupt. The founders of the company were Sorokin and his wife Nadezhda. Charge under Part 2 of Art. 199 of the Criminal Code was presented only to the general director of the company. He fully admitted his guilt and in 2021 was sentenced by the Presnensky District Court of Moscow to two years probation. In 2015, as follows from the verdict, he falsified data from the audit reports of Prosoft Trading and invoices for computer equipment, stealing more than 880 thousand rubles from the founders.
True, there were certain doubts that this person was a real and not a nominal leader. In 2019, he received a similar two-year suspended sentence for major fraud (Part 3 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
