Source: www.rucriminal.info

The Prosecutor General's Office approved the indictment and sent the criminal case to court against the former CEO of Plastic Logic Boris Galkin, he is accused of embezzling Rusnano money under the guise of creating a flexible tablet. According to the investigation, from December 2011 to March 2021, Galkin, acting as part of an organized group, embezzled about 6.7 billion rubles, "while the accomplices had no intention of building technological chains" in Russia

So, the case of embezzlement of 6.7 billion rubles allocated for the development of flexible tablets, which we have written about many times, has been referred to court.

It seems that the story of another Rusnano innovation is coming to an end. But it must be objectively noted that this was a bright and interesting project. The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and Rucriminal.info offer an objective recollection of it.

In the spring of 2011, a significant event took place in the office of the Prime Minister. Anatoly Chubais, who headed Rusnano at the time, demonstrated an amazing device to Vladimir Putin — a thin, almost weightless display that could be freely bent. "This is a revolution in education," Chubais confidently declared. No one then imagined that this "breakthrough" would result in multi-billion dollar losses and a loud scandal.

In the laboratories of British Cambridge, where the history of Plastic Logic began, scientists really created something revolutionary. Their organic thin-film transistors (OFET) were electronic components on a flexible plastic base. Unlike fragile silicon, these elements could be freely rolled up and unrolled like a sheet of paper.

The secret of the technology was in special conductive polymers. Their molecular structure allowed electrons to "jump" between atoms when voltage was applied. The result was impressive:

• display thickness — less than 0.1 mm (thinner than a human hair)

• weight — 10 times less than conventional screens

• power consumption — 100 times lower than liquid crystal panels

• impact resistance — withstood a fall from a height of 3 meters

However, few people in Russian offices were interested in technological details. Chubais, in 2009, found himself under a double blow: on the one hand, an inspection by the Prosecutor General's Office and criticism from deputies, on the other, the global crisis. Russia could have needed 130 billion more than nanotechnology; the head of Rusnano needed a loud, "understandable to the people" project. Andrey Fursenko, who simultaneously headed the Ministry of Education and Science and the supervisory board of Rusnano, became an ideal ally.

This is how the concept of a "school tablet" was born — the most unsuccessful application of Plastic Logic technology. After all, tablets from Apple and Samsung had already appeared on the market, surpassing the Russian development in all respects. Technical problems aggravated the situation: the technology was not ready for mass production; the operating voltage was 30 V (versus 5 V for conventional devices), the refresh rate was only 1 frame per second, and the service life was no more than 10,000 switching cycles.

As VChK-OGPU found out, Georgy Kolpachev, the managing director and project manager, saw all these problems. But instead of an honest conversation, he preferred to "keep a low profile".

 

The Plastic Logic tablet lost the fight to its competitors with a bang, and after A. Fursenko left the post of Minister of Education, the idea of ​​a school electronic textbook died out completely. The plant in Zelenograd was no longer needed. The project required a serious rethinking and a search for new areas of application for the developed technology, for example: the creation of indestructible mapping systems for the army, the development of disposable diagnostic sensors in medicine, smart RFID tags, etc.

The military were really delighted to see that the device continued to work even after it was cut in half, pierced by a bullet, but let's be honest, the Ministry of Defense is very far from innovation in peacetime.

According to Rucriminal.info, the refusal to build a plant in Russia caused another problem. The Plastic Logic project was structured in such a way that Rusnano's control was maximum in the Russian part of the project, otherwise the set of rights was typical for an ordinary investor (and Rusnano was exactly that), participating in the next round of financing.

The prospects were enticing, but the Russian part did not come together and Rusnano fell into a trap - either it was necessary to record losses and exit the project, or invest gigantic amounts of money in new and new rounds of financing, expecting a breakthrough result.

Fixing losses was unacceptable for Chubais for political reasons, as well as for security reasons, because the sworn enemies from Lubyanka were waiting for any mistake from the old red fox.

It is unlikely that Chubais had other, better options. As a result, 6.5 billion rubles went to "refining technologies" in foreign divisions of the Plastic Logic company, where they were spent on maintaining the technology.

In the eyes of Russian security agencies, this practice, common for high-tech projects, looked like a crime: out of 13 inMost of the allocated billions went outside of Russia. The plant in Zelenograd was never built, the equipment was not purchased, and although the licenses were received, it was difficult to assess their real value. Several working samples of tablets never turned into a serial product, and it was not possible to conclude contracts with the Ministry of Education. The work patterns of Russian investigators do not allow assessing projects of this kind: you can’t conduct a seizure in Cambridge, you can’t seize servers, you can’t send a request to a bank. The verdict was predictable: all the money that went outside the Russian Federation was stolen! It is impossible to challenge such a verdict in real Russia, especially since Chubais left Russia long ago (perfectly understanding the futility of excuses in such a situation), and the arrested Boris Galkin is not at all a serious player. What is also surprising in this story is the personal composition of the other "responsible parties", which included not the board members who approved the project for the Plastic Logic tablet (it is unrealistic to reach them due to the statute of limitations), but the board members who approved additional financing for the project in 2015-2020. As they say, they took everyone they could reach.

Objectively assessing all the participants in the process, one cannot ignore the current head of Rusnano, Sergei Kulikov - it was under his leadership that Plastic Logic went bankrupt over the past 5 years. However, Sergei Alexandrovich chose a safe and extremely effective strategy for Russia in 2025: he did nothing - and, therefore, made no mistakes. There is really nothing to criticize such a leader for.

But conclusions must be drawn. Technologies cannot be replaced by administrative delight, responsibility must be personal, payments for technologies are not theft, and a "witch hunt" will never replace systematic work. Plastic Logic could have become a real breakthrough, but it turned into a monument to bureaucratic short-sightedness, where ambitions turned out to be more important than technology, and debriefing was replaced by show.

The worst thing is that these mistakes continue to be repeated in new Russian projects. While officials are dividing up portfolios, Russian technologies are falling further and further behind. The story of Plastic Logic is not just a story about a failed project, but an alarming signal about the systemic problems of Russian innovation policy.

Timofey Grishin

Source: www.rucriminal.info