Back in January 2020, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs received information from representatives of one of the defense enterprises in Zelenograd. The statement said that one of the contractors supplies Chinese semiconductors under the guise of certified American ones. The police opened a criminal case on the fact of fraud, however, for some reason no one took active action with the suspects for two whole years. Only after a change in the composition of the investigative group did it become clear who and how the defense order had almost been disrupted.
The defendants were the general director Prime LLC» Chichersky Semyon Mikhailovich, his subordinate – commercial director Stepaev K.S., and head of the procurement department of the defense enterprise Konovalov A.A. The scheme has been in effect since 2016 – the close acquaintance of Konovalov and Chichersky allowed the latter to receive a lucrative contract for the supply of components. The transaction price is more than 25 million rubles. Prime undertook to supply gate matrices from the American manufacturer Xilinx, but slipped in a Chinese counterfeit, which is confirmed by the examination of the Moscow Research Center.
We learned about the substitution as part of the investigation of another criminal case – the same head of the procurement department of the defense plant Konovalov in 2019 convicted for commercial bribery. Even then, investigators knew that through Prime LLC the defendant was laundering government orders, and according to some information, Konovalov was unofficially listed as the technical director there. It is worth noting that the company that suffered from fraudulent schemes is also involved in the production of fire control systems for weapons and military equipment supplied to the Ministry of Defense. In particular, these are the latest radar stations, which are in service with the RF Armed Forces and have proven themselves in the conditions of the Northern Military District.
It is interesting that even after the scandal with the criminal case, the enterprising management of Prime concluded about 30 contracts in the field of government defense procurement (most electronic products are supplied to the KRET holding). Perhaps businessmen with counterfeit microcircuits were confident that they would not have any problems with law enforcement officers and that the matter would be hushed up. But as it became known, Chichersky, Konovalov, Stepaev and the warehouse manager of Prime LLC, A.V. Sashin. in August 2022, they were nevertheless charged with fraud.
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