They did not defend themselves: The Moscow City Court upheld the verdict of the ex-leaders of Zashchitainfotrans

The Moscow City Court on appeal upheld the verdict of the Simonovsky District Court of the capital against the former heads of FSUE Zashchitainfotrans. Three defendants were found guilty of embezzling 100 million rubles allocated for the development of the Unified State Information System for Ensuring Transport Security (EGIS OTB). The details are in the Izvestia article.

"Improvements" that didn't happen

As the court found, the crime was committed at the end of 2020 — at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The then Director General of FSUE Yuri Spassky, his deputy Viktor Parakhin and project manager Roman Lavrentiev misinformed the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Transport and initiated the conclusion of a state contract to finalize a key information system used to ensure public safety in transport.

Formally, the changes involved the introduction of data exchange between agencies involved in countering the spread of COVID-19. However, as emphasized in the Investigative Committee, in fact, the necessary improvements had already begun to be applied in the system a few months earlier.

"The illegal activities of these individuals were identified and suppressed by employees of the FSB of Russia together with the Investigative Committee of Russia," the FSB Public Relations Center reported.

Subcontracting for "our own"

In order to steal budget funds, the defendants, according to the Investigative Committee, concluded a subcontract with an affiliated organization, Inforion LLC. Further, they falsified the accounting documentation and presented previously implemented improvements as a result of the contractor's work.

"In order to realize criminal intent aimed at embezzlement of budget funds, the attackers concluded a subcontract agreement with an affiliated organization, Inforion LLC, falsified accounting documents and presented previously implemented improvements as a result of the work of the contractor," the Investigative Committee said. According to the FSB, a total of 100 million rubles were stolen.

Terms and penalties

The Moscow City Court upheld the verdict. The punishment turned out to be severe: ex-CEO Yuri Spassky — 7 years and 6 months in prison with a fine of 800 thousand rubles, his former deputy Viktor Parakhin — 7 years in a penal colony and a similar fine of 800 thousand rubles, project manager Roman Lavrentiev — 6 years and 6 months in a penal colony and a fine of 500 thousand rubles.

All three were found guilty under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (large-scale fraud). They will serve their sentences in a general regime colony. At the same time, the investigation was not limited to the enterprise level. Earlier, former Deputy Minister of Transport Alexei Semenov became a defendant in the same case. He was detained at the end of November 2024 and placed in custody on charges of fraud on a particularly large scale. According to Izvestia, we are talking specifically about the embezzlement of funds when concluding a contract for the revision of the EGIS OTB. This means that the corruption chain, according to the investigation, led to the very top of the transport department, and did not end with the heads of the FSUE.

The mathematics of theft

The amount of property seized from the convicts is not comparable to the amount stolen. If the damage is estimated at 100 million rubles, then, according to the Prosecutor General's Office, in April 2026, the court turned the property of Inforion LLC and the defendants themselves into state revenue for an amount significantly exceeding this figure. This may indicate that the criminal scheme generated income beyond a single episode, or that the seized assets were acquired with funds legalized through a chain of affiliated companies.

Besides, Zashchitainfotrans is not an ordinary contractor at all. The company is the legal successor of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Zheldorinformzashita Certification Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, established back in 1996 by a joint decision of the FSB, the State Technical Commission under the President of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Today, it acts as the authorized developer and sole contractor for ensuring the functioning of the EGIS OTB. In other words, we are talking about a structure responsible for the cybersecurity of the entire transport industry in the country.

The Moscow City Court has put an end to the criminal case against former top managers of Zashchitainfotrans. However, questions about who else was behind the scheme with the "fictitious improvements" and why the amount of seized assets is many times higher than the officially imputed damage remain open. Given that the former deputy Minister of Transport is already involved in the case, this is probably not the last episode in the story of how pandemic "digitalization" has turned into a tool for stealing billions from the budget.