The Central District Court of Tula sentenced the ex-Minister of Informatization of the Tula government Artur Kontrabaev and businessman Alexei Chernousov, accused of embezzlement of 68 million rubles of budget funds, which, according to the investigation, took place during the creation and implementation of the regional health information system (RISS) in the Tula region . Despite the conclusion of the re-examination, which did not find damage in the case, the court found the defendants guilty and sentenced them to 3.5 years and three years in prison, respectively, in a general regime colony.

However, they did not take the defendants into custody, leaving them under house arrest pending an appeal in the Tula Regional Court. This is especially important for Artur Kontrabaev, who suffers from a brain tumor and has been undergoing chemotherapy since autumn last year.

A case of six years

The criminal case was initiated by the Investigative Committee in 2017. Initially, the accused was alone. Artur Kontrabaev was charged with exceeding official powers (Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). However, the investigation was unable to prove this composition. And in February 2020, the same actions were qualified as embezzlement on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), which was imputed to the ex-official. Then a new defendant appeared in the case – the general director and co-owner of Smart Delta Systems LLC Alexey Chernousov. He was charged with complicity in the commission of this crime (part 5 of article 33, part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Initially, both defendants were under house arrest. However, after the indictment, Chernousov was arrested. He had to spend six months in a pre-trial detention center before he was transferred to house arrest. Kontrabaev, due to the presence of a serious illness – a brain tumor (astrocytoma), was placed under house arrest, under which he remained until the verdict. Both defendants faced up to ten years in prison.

The trial in the Central District Court of Tula started in May 2021 and took exactly two years. The investigation claimed that the defendants stole 68 million rubles allocated from the budget for the creation of new software, and instead of the new system, the region received a product created 15 years ago.

The metropolitan Smart Delta Systems LLC, which won the competition, did not produce any new developments, but simply used the Infoclinika medical information system (MIS), patented by it back in 2005, in the Tula region, or rather, one of its modules – Electronic Registry. The exclusive rights of the regional administration to the system were not transferred.

The government of the Tula region, recognized as victims in the case, does not agree with the accusation. It believes that the system was created and has been in operation for a long time, and there is no damage in the case. The victim did not file a civil claim in the case. Moreover, according to the rating of digitalization of regions, compiled in February 2021 by the government of the Russian Federation, the Tula region was among the leaders.

Expert opinions

The defense of the defendants argued that the examinations that formed the basis of the charges were carried out during the investigation with violations, and the study was carried out by non-state experts Alexei Babanin and Dmitry Zherebkov. The first of them, according to the defense, is actually a full-time expert of the Investigative Committee and was involved in a number of high-profile cases related to the creation of State Information Systems (GIS).

It was Babanin who conducted the examination in the case of the former deputy head of the Ministry of Energy Anatoly Tikhonov, who was accused of embezzling more than 600 million rubles allocated for the creation of the information system of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Russian Energy Agency”, as well as the former head of the IT department of Rosreestr Alexander Bibikov. The latter was charged with embezzlement of more than 225.5 million rubles, which were supposed to be spent on the “Unified State Register of Real Estate” (EGRN). Both cases are already in court.

As for the case of Kontrabaev and Chernousov, the court questioned the study and ordered a second computer-technical examination. A study conducted by the Center for Independent Expertise of Information Technology in Samara came to the opposite conclusion. The new examination found no damage in the case. Experts confirmed the cost of work performed in 2013-2014 under three government contracts for the creation, as well as maintenance and refinement of the system.

Deadlines for defendants

The defense asked the defendants to acquit. During the debate of the parties, the prosecutor asked for real terms for the defendants: for Kontrabaev, five years in prison, and for Chernousov, 4.5 years in a penal colony. The court gave them less. Kontrabaev was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison, and Chernousov – to three years.

According to the new rules, judge Olga Mityaeva on May 23 announced only the introductory and operative parts of the verdict, therefore, it is still unclear what she based it on. “It is not clear what the court referred to. Apparently, the court returned to the conclusions of the examination conducted by Babanin and Zherebkov, although it remains a mystery to us how this could be done, given that the court ordered a second examination, which means that it had doubts about the initial examinations. It is not clear where these doubts have gone,” Andrey Bastrakov, Artur Kontrabaev’s lawyer, commented on the outcome of the case to Business FM.

He noted that during the process, the prosecutor’s office could not name a single witness who would indicate the fact of a crime and the presence of damage. “According to the orders of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the prosecutor’s office is obliged to coordinate its position with the position of the victim, since by law they represent one side. However, the government of the Tula region refused to speak in the debate. And earlier, his representative, answering questions from the defense, stated that there was no evidence that work was not done during the creation of RISZ, and that there was no damage, ”said the lawyer.

The defense of both defendants plans to file an appeal with the Tula Regional Court, in which it intends to seek an acquittal. According to Andrei Bastrakov, the transfer of his client to a colony is tantamount to a death sentence. The lawyer said that if the judicial act still stands, Artur Kontrabaev should be released from serving his sentence due to his serious illness. Materials that astrocytoma is included in the list of diseases with which it is impossible to serve time were previously attached to the case file.