Skolkovo Foundation decided to bankrupt the startup M-Power World with a grant of 420 million rubles

The startup M-Power World, owned by the eponymous UK company, participated in the Skolkovo project from 2010 to 2016, implementing the innovative project “Creation of production of microbial fuel cells intended for purification of industrial and agricultural wastewater with simultaneous generation of electricity.” In December 2010, the startup raised 267.7 million rubles for the implementation of the project, according to a certificate from the Skolkovo Foundation, which was provided to RB.RU upon request.

“In connection with the beneficiary’s use of part of the grant in violation of the terms of its provision, the Skolkovo Foundation filed a claim with the Moscow Arbitration Court for recovery of 50 million rubles from M-Power World LLC, of ​​which 28 million rubles were returned by the company before the end of the consideration of the claim,” the certificate says.

The company was in no hurry to return the remaining 22 million rubles; in 2017, a lawsuit reached the Supreme Court, but the money could not be returned.

“Due to the fact that the specified debt was not paid, including as a result of the procedures provided for by the legislation on enforcement proceedings, the Skolkovo Foundation filed an application with the Moscow Arbitration Court to declare the debtor bankrupt,” the Fund’s certificate explains.

In total, Skolkovo was to allocate 420 million rubles to the project in four stages, but after inspections, the startup did not receive almost half of this amount. At the fourth stage, when it was planned to transfer 160 million rubles, the fund’s grant committee approved the amount, but minus 32 million rubles and an unused amount of 23 million rubles, and then subject to the participant raising funds from a cooperative-investor agreed with the fund on the amount of 80 million rubles. The fund also demanded that the grant policy be observed within the framework of the project.

As a result, the contract for the fourth stage was not concluded and the money was not transferred, according to court documents. After the audit, it turned out that the company did not fully use the funds transferred to it in the amount of 32.9 million rubles, and 17.1 million rubles were spent for purposes unrelated to the project.

According to the court records, the company spent the grant funds on repairs to rented premises of Moscow State University, transportation, business trips of employees and motivation payments. Thus, more than 4 million rubles were spent on repair and installation of air conditioners and more than 2 million rubles on motivation. In addition, the startup ordered equipment worth 9.2 million rubles to equip the site for the implementation of the photobiological microbial fuel cell project, made a 100% prepayment, but received nothing.

According to RBC, M-Power World received the first grant from Skolkovo; its scientific partners were the Japanese Institute of Science and Technology in Okinawa and the British University of Edinburgh. The publication stated that the partners were “well-known to the then head of the Skolkovo biomedical group, Igor Goryanin.” The M-Power World project was led by Goryanin’s colleague at the University of Edinburgh, Vyacheslav Fedorovich.

In 2014, the new head of the Skolkovo Foundation’s biomedical group, Kirill Kayem, acknowledged that the M-Power World report was unsatisfactory and stopped funding the company, the publication reports.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the company is owned by the English M Power World LLC and is currently not in operation. In June, the LLC was to be excluded from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities as an inactive legal entity.

Earlier it was reported that the French startup Brandquad returned 187 million rubles to the Skolkovo structure.

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