It turns out the story of the “internet ombudsman” is far more interesting than it may seem. To recap: he first introduced himself to the broader public by putting forward several outrageous theses, arguing that Russia should not train programmers (they’ll run off to America), and that our information technologies should not be sold (that won’t work, they’re outdated), but imposed on countries where we can ensure a military presence.
Naturally, a scandal followed—the entire industry and the broader public, in horror and despair, collectively slapped a hand to their foreheads. I wrote a post, and Ombudsman Marinichev replied with an article in Izvestia so utterly deranged that it is almost embarrassing to comment on it. Among other things, it includes lines like: “You are a bomber, Mr. Navalny,” “IT is at my fingertips,” and “You do not want a strong Russia, but I do.”
While everyone, mouths agape in astonishment, was reading the article, Leonid Volkov, recalling the eternally relevant saying, “Once they start talking about patriotism, it means they’ve been stealing,” quickly checked Marinichev’s record in government procurement and found the following:
At that point, we simply could not resist and conducted a small investigation into Internet Ombudsman Marinichev’s successful business ventures, which I will now report on:
In July 2014, two interesting events took place in Russia five days apart, both of which shook the internet to varying degrees.
On July 4, 2014, the State Duma suddenly adopted amendments to the law “On Personal Data,” according to which all personal data of Russian citizens must be stored on servers located in Russia. Experts said that the adoption of this law would reduce the country’s GDP by 0.27% (286 billion rubles).
And just five days later, Russia got an internet ombudsman: Dmitry Marinichev. The very person who was supposed to protect the IT industry from laws like this and from their consequences.
Dmitry Marinichev is the CEO and founder of the Radius Group of companies, which builds and services data centers. The company also has a small data center of its own. It is a small company and was not even among the top 20 industry leaders in the data center market. Thirty-five server racks. In short, very few people could explain where Marinichev had suddenly come from.
What Marinichev is doing in the post of internet ombudsman, however, is perfectly clear. For example, he declares the need to create preferential conditions for building data centers in the country. Logical enough for someone who makes money from data centers.
At the same time, Marinichev’s company, Klopp LLC (brand name Radiushost), is building a 25 MW data center in Moscow Technopolis on Volgogradsky Prospekt. That is 12,000 square meters (about 129,000 square feet) and 3,000 server racks—it will be, by a huge margin, the largest data center in Russia. For comparison, the entirety of VKontakte (Russia’s largest social network), with an audience of more than 50 million people a day and all of its video and music, is housed in a 12.8 MW data center. That is half the size of what is being built on Volgogradsky Prospekt.
This large-scale investment project is valued at 3.5 billion rubles. And here is the interesting part: Marinichev claims that he is investing more than 3 billion rubles into the creation of this data center (from Klopp LLC’s own funds), while the Moscow city government is contributing “only” 450 million rubles. But the state contract worth 2 billion rubles for the construction of Building No. 24 at Moscow Technopolis, awarded to another of Marinichev’s firms, Radius Group, is in fact the contract for building this very data center. In other words: Marinichev is lying when he says he is building the data center with his own money. He is building a data center for himself with public funds: one of his companies got the construction contract, and another will operate the data center. The Moscow budget is financing the infrastructure for the internet ombudsman’s commercial project, and quite a lot sticks to his fingertips in the process of creating that infrastructure.
And that raises another major question: where are the clients for such a gigantic volume of data supposed to come from? Industry experts we interviewed, speaking anonymously, all said the same thing: because of the economic crisis, the data center market is going through hard times, projects are being shut down, and there are plenty of empty racks. Launching a new large data center into this competitive, low-margin market looks very strange—unless its owners have the administrative clout to drive clients into their arms... And this is where the law “On Personal Data” comes in very handy, since it is gradually forcing Western services to move onto Russian servers. Such as Viber and AliExpress.
It follows that the main beneficiary of the law “On Personal Data” is Dmitry Marinichev. A small-time entrepreneur by the standards of the Russian IT market, who had a modest data center, is suddenly building a mega data center with public money—one that can only be in demand among Western companies being coerced onto Russian servers.
In this light, Marinichev’s statement that the implementation of the personal data law should be postponed for a year looks entirely logical. This is not opposition to a foolish law; it is a need to wait until construction of his own data center is finished.
One crucial detail: the ombudsman grabbed the contract without any competitive tender—he was made the “sole supplier.” One potential contractor even filed a complaint with the Federal Antimonopoly Service (Russia’s competition regulator) about the tender process: the documentation did not include a project plan, so the scope of work was unclear, making it impossible to prepare a bid. The antimonopoly service found violations and ordered changes to the documentation. However, an arbitration court later upheld Marinichev’s interests.
And yet people say there is no point writing about corruption, that it is all too petty. But how can one not write about it when behind every foolish action by the authorities or every strange personnel decision there stands not even some harmful outdated ideology, but simply a crook like this one (I was going to write “small-time,” but we are talking about 2 billion rubles from the budget).
In the original post, I wrote: “These are Russia’s real enemies; they are leading the nation toward defeat, including by imposing technological backwardness on us.” Now there are every reason to add, in this case as well: “while enriching themselves through corruption.”