Blockchain for state procurement in Russia

Russian state procurement system is one of the biggest corruption problems this country faces. Many state actors cheat behind the back of financial authorities and demand unjustified amounts of money for projects which actually cost much cheaper. And so, a governor of the city can ask for a big sum for roads pavement, then take more than a half for himself and use what remains for very cheap roadworks. Or, as even authorities of the big cities in Russia often do, get the money for roadworks of the roads that are perfectly fine and were repaired just a year ago.

These were only the simplest examples of money laundering in Russian state procurement. No wonder why VEB, or Vneshekonombank (with close ties to the Kremlin and previously seen learning from Vitalik Buterin) wants to improve the situation and upgrade the Unified Electronic Trade Platform used for state procurement in Russia. The chief executive of the organization responsible for this platform, Anton Emelyanov, is sure that the level of transparency and security would increase. As the representative of another company, Cognitive Technologies, notes: “The information is stored everywhere and nowhere, in no specific place, this ensures the impossibility of machinations with state procurement, as all traces of them will be kept [and demonstrated] in the distributed network.”

And if somebody thinks this structure will be hard to build due to conservatism of Russian elites and bureaucracy, there’s news about another blockchain project, potentially even more difficult to launch: a Sharia law-based blockchain for an Islamic financial institutions in Saudi Arabia.