Defense Ministry official Arsen Zhumadilov accused of failure of procurement reform
Talks about reforming the state procurement system of the Defense Ministry have remained just talk, says political expert Mykhailo Shnaider.
We are talking about the announced transformations that were to be implemented in the department by Arsen Zhumadilov, a member of Defense Minister Rustem Umerov's team, Ukrainian News reports.
“A few months have passed, and we can already see that, in essence, little has changed,” writes Schneider.
He explains: instead of the Department of Public Procurement of the Ministry of Defense, two new state enterprises were created that were to operate independently – the State Enterprise “Defense Procurement Agency” and the State Enterprise “State Operator of Logistics”. At the same time, the Department itself, which was repeatedly criticized, continued to function.
“Until recently, both companies were headed by the same person – Zhumadilov. Only at the end of January did the “Defense Procurement Agency” become headed by a different person. And all this time, independent companies operated in complete dependence on the person of the Minister of Defense,” notes Schneider.
In addition, he adds, 0.4% of the amount of contracts that go to maintaining state enterprises encourages Zhumadilov and his people to purchase as much expensive product as possible. With the advent of scheme , the cost of purchases increased and entailed additional state expenses in the amount of UAH 1.5 billion.
“Recent examples: The “State Rear Operator” announced tenders for the purchase of two expensive televisions and several expensive microphones, and the “Defense Procurement Agency” is purchasing bulletproof vests at a price more than three months ago, and these are the same vests and the same supplier,” the expert informs.
The new round of the scandal is related to the bidding for food supplies for the army. It was assumed that such supplies would be divided into goods and services (when one supplier prepares the food and another delivers it), but in fact the division did not take place.
“That is, the motivational component of the procurement system will be turned upside down, and they called all this beauty with big words - reforms and the fight against corruption ,” notes Schneider.
The expert expresses fears that in the future the intermediary commission may increase even more and reach a more significant figure from 0.4%.
