A corruption case could be what undid a million-dollar Russian computer deal

The Interior Ministry (MVD) has refused to buy Russian computers running on Baikal-T1 processors, says the newspaper Vedomosti. The MVD signed a contract worth 357 million rubles ($6.1 million) for 9,348 new computers to administer the written portion of driver’s license exams. The MVD awarded the procurement contract to T-Platforms, a company tied to Baikal Electronics, but it only supplied 1,837 computers for 71 million rubles ($1.2 million). The MVD rejected the rest of the computers.

A spokesperson for T-Platforms told Vedomosti that the deal fell through because the MVD withheld its advance payment and failed to provide the company with information it needed to fulfill the contract. The company tried to sue the Interior Ministry to force it to pay for the remaining computers, but the lawsuit was rejected.

Sources told Vedomosti that the MVD’s decision could be related to Andrey Nechayev, the Interior Ministry’s chief structural engineer, who was arrested in October for allegedly accepting kickbacks from contractors. Nechayev was reportedly one of the leading advocates of migrating the MVD to equipment based on Russian microelectronics — specifically to computers running Baikal processors.