On August 11, the State Enterprise "Odessa Sea Trade Port" held a tender for the thermal modernization of the car depot. The winner was the little-known company "Interior Group" LLC, which will receive UAH 22.61 million from the budget.
At first glance, it seems like an ordinary purchase, but the details raise serious questions.
Interior Group was established only in 2022 and belongs to Yevhen Chelak from Bolgrad. In the Prozorro system, the company does not have a single fully executed government contract, but as of April 2025, it has already received orders from the Odessa Port for UAH 39.68 million. All of them are from one customer.
The port management, led by Oleksiy Myaskovskyi and authorized person Andriy Poroshenko, set extremely strict conditions in the tender documentation. Participants had to prove experience with objects of impact class no lower than SS2 and provide ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 37001:2016 certificates.
These requirements effectively eliminated potential competitors. In particular, the cheaper offer from Berg Group was rejected due to formal inaccuracies in the documents. As a result, the bidding was held practically without competition.
Analysis of the estimate showed systematic overpricing. For example, Ceresit CN 178 mixture is included at 33 UAH/kg, while the market price is 24–25 UAH/kg. Izovat basalt slabs are estimated at 10,436 UAH/cubic m with a real cost of 4–5 thousand UAH. Baumit MVR UNI plaster is included at 22 UAH/kg instead of 13–16 UAH.
Only in these positions can the overpayment for the budget exceed UAH 1.5 million.
The concentration of large contracts in the hands of one newly created company with no proven track record and the virtual lack of competition in tenders pose serious risks to public finances.
The port of Odessa, one of Ukraine's key strategic assets, has found itself at the center of a potential corruption story. The lack of market prices and the secrecy of procedures may indicate that the scheme was tailored to a specific contractor.
