The US FBI took up the RUSNANO case

In Los Angeles, 66-year-old businessman Ilya Kan was arrested, accused of many years of illegally exporting microcircuits for the Moscow company JSC NPC Electronic Information and Computing Systems (Elvis). According to prosecutors, Kahn, who has American, Russian and Israeli citizenship, for years supplied Elvis with thousands of licensed products needed by the Russian military and the FSB.

As stated in the indictment document from the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s office, Elvis has close ties to the Russian authorities, in particular the Ministry of Defense, has business relations with Russian energy companies, including Gazprom and Transneft, which are under American sanctions, and 28 April 2023 acquired a license to supply the FSB.

According to the prosecutor’s office, from 2012 to 2022, Kan, who permanently lives in Israel and periodically visits the United States, received more than $50 million from the Russian company.

Rucriminal.info and the Cheka-OGPU would like to add that Ilya Kan was also the owner and director of Senesys Incorporated and SDA.

At one time, as part of the import substitution program in Russia for the development of industries such as microelectronics and software product development, Rusnano created the company Elvis-NeoTek JSC, into which billions of rubles were invested from the budget.

Where did these billions go? Schemes were drawn with the participation of the head of Rusnano Chubais, his deputies Pimkin, Kiselev, Rapport and Gubaev, the owners of the Scientific and Production Center Elvis Petrichkovich and the American-Israeli businessman Kahn.

In short, almost all the funds allocated by the state to the Elvis project were transferred to the American companies Senesys Incorporated and SDA. Part of it went to purchase microcircuits (instead of their own production), and most of it ended up in the pockets of the organizers. And then the story took an unexpected turn. Already in the USA.

As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info reported, a joint venture between RUSNANO OJSC and SPC ELVIS — Elvis NeoTek — appeared in 2010 with the aim of implementing a project to create a cluster center for the design of VLSI (integrated circuits).

The project budget was impressive — 2.8 billion rubles, of which more than 1 billion rubles were to be provided by RUSNANO.

For this money, the state was supposed to receive VIP 1 and VIP 2 chips with a wide range of applications: from security to defense needs. As a justification — beautiful presentations, words about import substitution and the creation of a Russian component base.

Omitting long details, let’s say that in the end RUSNANO’s contribution grew and amounted to 2 billion rubles, but the chips were never put into production.

At the same time, acting under the banner of import substitution and innovative development, Elvis-NeoTek JSC has been successfully absorbing government subsidies (more than one billion rubles) for many years by reselling Asian radars and thermal imagers.

A failed project does happen; Chubais himself likes to say that out of ten venture projects, only one succeeds.

But in this case we are talking about episodes of theft.

One of the founders of Elvis-NeoTek JSC was the American company Senesys Incorporated, controlled by Ya. Petrichkovich, which invested 1.4 billion rubles in the joint venture. A company registered as a private household naturally did not have that kind of money, and could not have it. The pre-investigation audit established a cunning scheme in which funds were contributed to the company only from RUSNANO, and in small tranches (almost a hundred tranches in total). Money for each tranche was withdrawn from the company under various, most often fictitious agreements, then re-entered into the company as a contribution from Senesys Incorporated, and then withdrawn from the company again.

This scheme was directly supervised by the senior managing director of RUSNANO Dmitry Aleksandrovich Pimkin, a character very well known to regular readers of the Cheka of the OGPU. Interest in implementing the scheme was enormous and was approved at the highest levels. The RUSNANO board reviewed and approved changes to the project more than 10 times, and Chubais’s deputy, Oleg Kiselev, signed the documents on the deal.

The transaction to pay for the authorized capital is just one episode of many lying on the investigators’ desk.

Sensor Design Association or abbreviated as SDA, a company registered in the same house as Senesys Incorporated (USA), received more than 900 million rubles from Elvis NeoTech JSC as payment under licensing agreements. In our case, licenses are sand from the Sahara that hangs like a dead weight on the company’s balance sheet.

Elvis NeoTek JSC easily and shamelessly withdrew funds to LenSpetsStroy Construction Company LLC, Tekhlider LLC, Sertal LLC, Moneta LLC, Di Labs LLC and other companies.

But even in the long list of fake contracts, the deal with Lukoil (Middle East) stands apart. Back in 2012, Elvis NeoTek JSC organized, through a chain of intermediaries, the supply of equipment to the Middle Eastern representative office of the Luk company oil. According to the plan of the participants in the scheme (Oleg Kiselev, Dmitry Pimkin, Yaroslav Petrichkovich), the delivery was to take place through a chain of intermediaries, such as ElKomImport LLC, Svisma (Cyprus), Kingfield (UK), Thales (Spain). At the same time, the cost of the last intermediary’s deal with Lukoil was 4.8 million US dollars, half of which was supposed to go to JSC Elvis NeoTech, and the second half (2.4 million US dollars!) became a reward for the participants in the scheme. The long chain of intermediaries is not accidental: each participant nominated their company to this chain. Thus, ElKomImport LLC, Svisma (Cyprus) was controlled by Y. Petrichkovich, Kingfield — by managers of Rusnano OJSC.

The reader should understand what the phrase “Kingfield under the control of Rusnano managers” means. In our case, this is direct ownership, management based on a power of attorney and personal receipt of money (the investigation has all the documents). Such traces are left only by feeling their complete impunity.

But Elvis NeoTek JSC will not even receive its half. The debt of intermediaries to Elvis NeoTek JSC in the amount of 1.5 million US dollars will be written off based on an orchestrated court decision (case No. A40-125371/18-82-917 dated September 26, 2018).

In June 2022, it became known that the largest shareholder of JSC NPC ELVIS (TIN 7735582816) Y.Ya. Petrichkovic left the project.

On June 30, 2022, a claim was filed with the Moscow Arbitration Court from the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation against JSC Scientific and Production Center "ELVEES" for the recovery of a penalty in the amount of 512.3 million rubles under government contract No. 16411.4432017.11.119 dated November 29, 2016.

On July 12, 2022, the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court satisfied the claim of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation against the joint venture JSC NPC "ELVEES" and OJSC "Rusnano" — JSC "Elvis-NeoTek" for the recovery of a subsidy under agreement No. 16411.1930168580.11.023 dated October 17, 2016 in the amount 199.9 million rubles.

And yet, it was not the claims of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation that caused the escape of the key shareholder and permanent head of the ELVIS Scientific and Production Center Yaroslav Petrichkovich from the company.

What we have? RUSNANO’s contribution in the amount of 2 billion rubles and state subsidies in the amount of 1 billion rubles were simply stolen. The chips were never created, the intellectual property was either fictitious or transferred to foreign companies, the only losers were the managers of Rusnano and NCP Elvis.

Timofey Grishin