The Military Prosecutor’s Office found fraud in “Safe City”

The main military prosecutor’s office found signs of fraud in the spending of budget funds allocated for research and experimental design work for the “Safe City” system. The materials are sent to the Investigative Committee of Russia to initiate a criminal case. RBC writes about this with reference to sources.

The amount of possible damage is estimated at 620 million rubles, the interlocutor of RBC said, noting that “this is almost the full amount that was allocated for scientific research and experimental design work.

We are talking about works that began to be performed in 2020 by order of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The National Center for Informatization of “Rostec” is the main executor of research works on the modernization of “Safe City”. It was supposed to create new technical and legal standards for the “Safe City”, including a regulatory draft federal law.

Lawyer Vladimir Gerasimenko, representing the interests of several Rostec employees, told RBC that “the scientific work has been done, the technical specifications have been fulfilled, the documents have been signed by the customer, and the money has been paid.” The lawyer believes that the customer of the scientific research may have changed the requirements for “Safe City”. “Moreover, the task was set and led by the heads of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and others began to accept it,” he said.

The “Safe City” hardware and software complex has existed since 2007. Its tasks include collecting and processing data on emergency situations coming from different monitoring systems – sensors, gas analyzers and video recording cameras.

The total costs for the development and implementation of “Safe City” were estimated at 150 billion rubles. The Ministry of Emergency Situations proposed to spend another 97 billion rubles on the modernization of the system, but the government criticized this project because of the high cost.

In 2020, the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported on the launch of “Safe City” in 12 regions.

The Russian authorities are increasingly using the facial recognition system to control people and suppress civil activity, and the number of people detained and fined after the fact is growing every year, notes “OVD-Info”. At the same time, official documents about the use of this technology do not spread, on the contrary, they hide it in every way.

In September 2022, the authorities of the Russian regions bordering Ukraine asked the government to allocate additional funds for the implementation of the “Safe City” system.