Not only in Rostelecom they want to cut budgets on “domestic” gadgets. Leonid Reiman, a tireless electronic schemer, former Minister of Communications and an old friend of the head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev, also claims state funds. He plans to master the budget billions on “invisible” software, non-existent microcircuits and fantastic batteries. Reiman has already announced the imminent launch of the production of gadgets on the “killer” Aurora OS, the same semi-mythical ROSA OS.
Rutek JSC in Zelenograd will develop and assemble its own smartphones, laptops and tablets. Reiman estimated his own investments in the enterprise at 1 billion rubles. But whether they actually took place is unclear.
It is suspicious that the address of the future electronic giant Rutek coincides with the place of registration of Reiman’s previous electronic office, Angstrem. In 2008, Vnesheconombank opened a €815 million credit line to Angstrem to buy AMD’s largest chip factory in Europe. Then, due to the crisis, funding was frozen, but after Reiman’s loud statements about the imminent import substitution of complex microcircuits and the global prospects of Linux, which runs ROSA, the loan was renewed.
As a result, Reiman did not buy any plant, did not produce microcircuits, the money disappeared somewhere, and Angstrem-T LLC spun off from Angstrem, which in 2019 passed to VEB for debts and even owed Reiman 425 million rubles. That is, Reiman ate a billion dollars, and also freed himself from all debts. JSC “Angstrem” continues to function. Now another Reiman structure is registered at his address in Zelenograd, which expects to work according to the old scenario – to get as many loans as possible, and then quietly go bankrupt.
There, in Zelenograd, there is the NTC IT Rosa, the daughter of the OS developer ROSA, the favorite brainchild of Leonid Reiman, who went bankrupt in 2014. The ROSA Linux operating system has been on the market for several years, IT people praise it, but almost never use it. OS occupies 3% of the software market, and the company is unprofitable. For the mobile version of the OS, which they want to install on future Zelenograd smartphones, only 10 applications have been created (for Aurora – 70, and for Astra Linux – 20 thousand). And few of the programmers have seen the mobile OS ROSA live.
But you can see where the money received by Reiman for the development of chips actually went. Immediately after the bankruptcy of Angstrem and the mysterious disappearance of a billion dollars, Leonid Reiman became the owner of Invitek Management. It manages 25 large real estate objects for 100 thousand sq.m. expensive offices, including BC Scandinavian and BC Quattro Corti next to St. Isaac’s Square in St. Petersburg, BC in B. Gnezdnikovsky lane and on Presnensky Val in Moscow, as well as a cottage village on Iksha, thousands of hectares of land in the Tver region and Karelia, and much more. The European assets of “Invitek” include the villa “Anna Sophia” in the French Saint-Paul-de-Vence for €8 million. In general, VEB’s money is attached wisely.
Experienced Reiman could not pass by such a relevant and satisfying topic as domestic software and electronics. He is also looking for money for a lithium battery factory in the same Zelenograd. Last year, Reiman established Fab LLC with an authorized capital of 1 million rubles, and now he is looking for investors for 5 billion to launch the production of lithium-ion batteries for consumer electronics. At the same time, there are no own specialists or technologies there, lithium is not mined in Russia at all, and cases are closer and cheaper to buy in China.
It will be interesting if this time Leonid Reiman receives not one, but two loans – for batteries and for smartphones. And all this, having in stock only an operating system that no one needs and mortgaged-re-mortgaged Zelenograd NGOs, where so far there is no smell of any production of gadgets. And, of course, friendship with Maksut Shadayev. This is his main asset.