The Ministry of Agriculture failed to get from its contractors the full-fledged creation and launch of an important GIS, for which almost 1.5 billion rubles were allocated; of which over 1 billion rubles. already paid. Now the parties are arguing among themselves in arbitration courts. However, experts interviewed by CNews believe that in the current logic of the development of events, the likelihood of criminal cases against employees of the ministry is extremely high.
Super-problem GIS of the Ministry of Agriculture
Having broken contracts with the developer of an expensive information system, the Ministry of Agriculture found itself in a situation in which it is impossible to use the results of the work already received (and mostly paid for), the money was wasted, which means that questions from law enforcement agencies may naturally arise for the ministry. Such conclusions can be reached by comparing data from open sources, and based on the comments of experts familiar with the details of the project.
We are talking about the creation and development of an information system for digital services of the agro-industrial complex (IS CS AIC). The first stage of the system under the contract dated December 2019 for 65.5 million rubles. was created by the company "Kontroltugou.ru". After that, two contracts for the second stage of creating the system and its development in May 2020 went to Force - Development Center. The amount of the first of them amounted to 547 million rubles, the second - 859.2 million rubles. That is, in total, at least 1.47 billion rubles have already been allocated by the state for the system.
As CNews wrote the other day, disagreements arose between the customer and the second contractor at the final stages of the execution of contracts, and at the turn of August-September 2022, both contracts were terminated by the Ministry of Agriculture unilaterally.
This has already provoked two proceedings in the arbitration court. The first one is based on the claim of the Force Development Center against the Ministry of Agriculture dated April 25, 2022 for the recovery of underpaid funds. The second, also at the request of the contractor dated September 8, 2022, is to recognize the termination of contracts as illegal.
In the first trial, the first court instance has already ruled in favor of Force. If an appeal (which may not be) does not change the nature of this decision, then it will be considered to have entered into legal force. After that, the second proceedings (now suspended) should also automatically end in favor of the contractor.
If everything happens in this way, and it is confirmed that the system cannot work (details below), it will turn out that the state has spent huge amounts of money (1.12 billion rubles have already been paid to contractors; at least another 367.2 million rubles, including penalties, will have to be paid in addition by a court decision), but did not receive any result.
GIS is not working. She is "destroyed"
From the already existing court decision on the first of the claims, it follows that on March 31, 2021, by order of the Ministry of Agriculture, the system developed by the contractor was put into trial operation. Two experts interviewed by CNews, who are closely familiar with the project, assured the editors that in the current situation it is impossible to use the results of the work already received (and paid for), that is, the IS CS of the agro-industrial complex has not reached the industrial operation and will not reach without the participation of Force.
Both experts pay attention to Force's explanations in court. “According to the contractor, by disabling access to technical resources and refusing to maintain the operability of the information system deployed in the trial operation environment (letter No. 5/33 of February 10, 2022), the customer, by his actions, destroyed the results of work under contracts virtually impossible,” the decision of the servants of Themis says.
On the page of the IS CA of the agro-industrial complex on the website of the Center for Digital Transformation in the Agro-Industrial Complex under the Ministry of Agriculture, it is said that the system in question is now “being created”.
One of the experts points out that back in June 2022, the Ministry of Agriculture held a request for prices on the market for work, some of which duplicates what should have already been done under the aforementioned contracts.
At the time of publication of this material, the Ministry of Agriculture could not comment on the state of the IS CA of the agro-industrial complex for CNews. A few days earlier, the Ministry also ignored the editorial question regarding the completed trial.
