The government suspended the issuance of IT grants after the arrest of the deputy head of the Ministry of Digitization

The Ministry of Digital Development has suspended the issuance of grants for IT specialists until September 1. Last week, the deputy head of the department, Maxim Parshin, was detained on charges of accepting a bribe. for support with grenades.

By the fall, the agency plans to update the composition of the grant committee and change the decision-making processes. In addition, the Ministry of Digitization will audit the “purity” of existing projects.

The ministry therefore intends, by September 1:

• conduct an “independent assessment of employees” of the main grant operator of the Russian Foundation for the Development of Information Technologies;
• update the composition of decision-making bodies and the pool of experts evaluating incoming applications;
• carry out a control of the decisions to grant subsidies in 2022-2023. In case of doubts about 100% purity, projects will be cancelled;
• optimize decision-making processes to completely exclude the influence of employees of the Ministry of Digitization and ensure transparency.

For this purpose, the Ministry of Digitization will appoint a special commission composed of representatives of the main associations in the field of IT. It will be led by the head of the department, Maksut Shadayev.

The Ministry of Digitization grants subsidies for the development of national information technologies. Developer companies can apply for up to 500 million rubles, companies implementing Russian IT solutions – up to 6 billion rubles, start-ups – up to 20 million rubles. Enterprises could receive up to 700 million rubles to introduce new digital solutions.

On July 13, the Basmanny Court in Moscow placed the deputy head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksim Parshin, under house arrest until September 12. The official is suspected of taking bribes on a particularly large scale. The second defendant in the case, businessman Alexander Monosov, suspected of bribery, received the same preventive measure.

State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtajn said that the official was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe of 3.5 million (Khinshtajn did not specify the currency) in a Moscow restaurant.

Maksut Shadayev, head of the Ministry of Digital Development, reacted to the detention of his deputy. In an internal chat for employees, he wrote that the situation was “extremely difficult” and “arrows will now fly towards the ministry”. “There will be a lot of criticism. And that’s understandable. A shadow has fallen over all our work. But we come out of the fact that a lot has been done, we have something to be proud of and even this event will not cross out these results. Stay calm, stay calm. I am sure that this situation will not affect our plans. And we have a lot of them,” wrote the minister.