Today, Ukraine needs to go not only the difficult path to victory, but also the path of post-war recovery. Moreover, already now, during the war, the state has begun the process of rebuilding settlements liberated from occupation, mainly the Kyiv region.
Today, we will focus our attention on the state institution that commissioned tenders for the reconstruction of the Kyiv region - the Department of Regional Development of the Kyiv Regional State Administration and its officials who coordinate the process of "fair and transparent" reconstruction.
Why do tender purchases, on which the regional budget spends billions of hryvnias, go into the pockets of shell companies, while ordinary people are once again wintering without a roof over their heads? What new schemes are officials coming up with to launder money for the reconstruction of the Kyiv region? And how much does it cost to kick back a contractor in order to get a gold mine in "transparent" tenders for the reconstruction of the Kyiv region? Read in our investigation.
In order to understand the situation that actually lies behind the loud slogans of “transparent reconstruction” of the Kyiv region and to reveal confirmed facts, we selected all procurements where the customer is the Department of Regional Development of the Kyiv Regional State Administration and the title mentioned reconstruction, restoration, reconstruction and the phrase “suffered as a result of Russian aggression”. The Prozorro website provides information on 800 concluded contracts for a total amount of more than UAH 7 billion during the period of major reconstruction. After analyzing some of the tenders, we discovered blatant facts that directly indicate corruption schemes. In fact, one or two companies participate in all tenders. Why do so few participants apply for such large tenders? The answer is below in the material.
According to the information we have, the gray cardinal in the organization of tenders in the Kyiv Regional Military Administration is the advisor to the head of the KOVA - Oleksandr Vasylyovych Onyshchenko. The official, having broad powers, created a money laundering in the process of rebuilding the Kyiv region. As our sources in the KOVA report, Onyshchenko openly offers “handmade” companies, under which the requirements in the tender documentation are prescribed, to participate in tenders. The price of the question is a 15% kickback from the amount of the declared purchase price into the pocket of Oleksandr Onyshchenko.
The contractors themselves complain that for more than two months, technical supervision has been blocking them from signing the acts of completed work, sending everyone to Onyshchenko to close financial issues. Business representatives also complain that the curator of the reconstruction of the Kyiv region, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, openly threatens them with reprisals from law enforcement agencies if they participate in tenders without the approval of KOVA. Apparently, it was Onyshchenko who took control of the tender committee of the Department of Regional Development of KODA and allows only affiliated contractors . From the photos published by the KOVA press service, it can be seen that Oleksandr Onyshchenko, as an advisor to the head of Ruslan Kravchenko, takes direct part in working meetings related to reconstruction, and also carries out on-site inspections of construction sites in the region. Thus, it is Onyshchenko, on behalf of the Kyiv OVA, who coordinates the corrupt system of reconstruction of the Kyiv region. Let us recall that funding for the reconstruction of housing affected by Russian aggression comes from European donors. However, corruption schemes in the Kyiv region and the thirst for enrichment have reached such proportions that officials are unaware of the responsibility that awaits them.
What's wrong with the tenders from the Department of Regional Development of KOVA?
We analyzed several tenders announced by the Department of Regional Development of KOVA and the companies that participated in them. For example, the procurement for “Overhaul with restoration of load-bearing structures of residential building No. 367A on Tsentralna Street in Borodyanka village damaged as a result of the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” was announced in July 2023. The expected cost is UAH 52 million 210 thousand. Three companies applied for the tender – LLC “NIDCOM” with a bid of UAH 47 million 802 thousand, LLC “STROYINVEST” with a bid of UAH 48 million 320 thousand and LLC “COMPANY VEGA KM” with a bid of UAH 49 million 457 thousand.
The winner was a company with a dubious reputation, “STROYINVEST”. The company has been registered in Dnipro since 2014 and has a criminal record. In recent years, the company has won tenders worth over 4 billion hryvnias. These are mainly purchases by the Dnipro Regional State Administration. The owner of the company is Lazar Natalia, and Stroyinvest LLC is linked in open sources to Gennady Korban.
Last summer, the Dnipro Prosecutor's Office reported on criminal proceedings regarding the embezzlement of funds during the renovation of a sports complex. It was about the renovation of a sports complex in Dnipro on Universalna Street for 149 million hryvnias. This facility was supposed to be completed by Stroyinvest LLC in 2018, but in 2019, when the company received an advance payment, it turned out that the work had not actually been completed. As of 2020, it was reported that the company had received 148 million, but had never finished the work. The company is also involved in a criminal case regarding tax evasion.
The Department of Regional Development has held many such “black” tenders, which cast a shadow on itself to the naked eye. For example, the tender “Overhaul of a residential building at the address: Kyiv region, Buchansky district, village of Gostomel, Malovnichy 5” has been announced four times, starting in September 2023. After the bidding, the tender was canceled each time, even if there were participants. One company, STATE JOINT STOCK COMPANY “BUILDING COMPANY “UKRBUD”, took part in the tender, which was announced on September 18. However, the customer rejected the offer. From the tender documentation we see that the residents of the house appealed the customer’s decision, expecting that their house would still be rebuilt by winter. They even sent a complaint to the State Audit Service.
However, the KODA canceled the tender and announced it again 10 days later, and then three more times. It is obvious that the customer was unable to agree with any company on a rollback, and therefore simply canceled the purchase. So the residents of the building are again wintering without a roof over their heads.
In its justification, the Department of Regional Development always has a template official response - "to cancel the procurement due to non-compliance with the conditions of the technical specification and other requirements for the subject of the procurement of tender documentation". However, as practice shows, not all participants are disqualified by the Department's tender committee due to inconsistencies in the documentation. For example, in the procurement for "New construction of a civil defense protective structure on the territory of the Ivankiv Lyceum at ul. Tsentralna, 2 in the village of Ivankiv, Boryspil district, Kyiv region" only one participant took part - LLC "INTEGRAL BUD-STANDART". And it is not surprising, because the requirements for tender proposals contain a number of discriminatory requirements that are practically impossible for a participant "from the outside" to fulfill in a short period of submitting tender proposals. 36 specialties in the direction of labor protection, 7 types of permits for the performance of work that do not actually intersect with the subject of the procurement, 5 DSTU ISO certificates, which are also not provided for in the technical specifications. So the only company in all of Ukraine that was able to fulfill these meticulous conditions was LLC "INTEGRAL BUD-STANDART", with whom the contract for the performance of the works was signed. However, analyzing the winner's tender offer, we see that their documentation has a number of inconsistencies, in particular, in terms of the estimate.
It is INTEGRAL BUD-STANDART LLC, according to data from open registers, that has a criminal and fictitious reputation. Thus, according to the decision of the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv in case No. 757/46574/18-k, the Department of Education of the Darnytsia District in Kyiv State Administration in September 2017 conducted a procurement procedure for the subject of "Reconstruction of stadiums and sports grounds" (2 lots) with a budget of UAH 87.798 million (Lot No. 1 - general educational institution No. 62 and Lot No. 2 - general educational institution No. 111). The participants in the procurement for both lots were LLC “SCIENTIFIC-PRODUCTION ENTERPRISE “AKVASERVIS” (winner of Lot 2) and LLC “BC “BUDIVELNA STOLYTSYA” (winner of Lot 1), which have signs of fictitiousness.
Economic Protection of the National Police, state funds received by LLC “SCIENTIFIC-PRODUCTION ENTERPRISE “AQUASERVICE” and LLC “BC “BUDIVELNA STOLYTSYA” for the above-mentioned purchases were transferred to the account of an enterprise with signs of fictitiousness LLC “INTEGRAL BUD-STANDART”. The latter transferred part of the funds received for partial performance of work, directly or through the accounts of related companies, with the aim of taking possession of them and converting them into cash, to the accounts of other enterprises with signs of fictitiousness. In addition, the pre-trial investigation body established that the general contractor and subcontractor LLC “INTEGRAL BUD-STANDART” did not perform the work stipulated by the general contract of tender procurement. The case continues to this day. Despite the fact that LLC "INTEGRAL BUD-STANDART" has a criminal history in tender procurement, the Department of Regional Development of KOVA is currently actively promoting this company as an active participant in the reconstruction of the Kyiv region and is concluding a number of agreements with it.
An even more interesting situation occurred with the tender procurement for the overhaul of the Makarivsk preschool educational institution "Prolisok" of the Makarivsk village council with the arrangement of a shelter and the improvement of the adjacent territory. The customer for the procurement was also the Department of Regional Development of the KODA. The tender was announced twice. The first bidding took place in October 2023. Two companies took part: LLC "AES-GRUPP" and LLC "EUROELITBUD". According to the results of the auction, LLC "AES-GRUPP" was sent for qualification with the lowest price offer. However, the customer, represented by the Department of Regional Development of the KOVA, disqualified the participant, citing inconsistencies in the technical specifications. Analyzing this purchase on the Prozorro website, we learned that AES-GRUPP did not agree with the customer's decision and filed a complaint with the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, winning this complaint on all counts.
Interestingly, the explanations of the customer's tender committee interpret the disqualification as the fact that the indicators of the volumes of materials of LLC "AES-GRUPP" allegedly do not correspond to the technical specifications by 0.001 kopeck.
However, in clause 3.20 of the Tender Documentation there is the concept of “rounding of figures”. Such roundings, according to the documentation, which cannot lead to a change in value, are considered permissible and legal. The satisfaction of the complaint in the Antimonopoly Committee confirms this thesis, since they obliged the customer to cancel its decision to disqualify LLC “AES-GRUPP” and return it for re-qualification. However, it is obvious that the KOVA Department, represented by its curator Oleksandr Onyshchenko, does not feel the law under its feet so much that it again disqualified this company from the bidding and recognized LLC “EUROELITBUD”, which is an affiliated participant from the same Oleksandr Onyshchenko, as the winner.
From the Prozorro platform, it is clear that, not agreeing with this decision, LLC AES-GRUPP filed a complaint with the Antimonopoly Committee again with its own comments on the tender documentation of LLC EUROELITBUD.
Analyzing the text of the complaint, it is clear that the complainant insists on the reliability of his indicators and claims that the proposal of LLC "EUROELITBUD" contains more serious violations of the tender documentation, in particular in the calculations, qualifications and scope of work, which reach errors in thousandths. But for some reason the customer did not take this into account, recognizing "EUROELITBUD" as the winner. These facts are confirmed by the information on the open site "Prozorro".
Given such an unfavorable situation and realizing the likelihood of a repeated loss in the Antimonopoly Committee, the Department of Regional Development announced the tender again, which, to put it mildly, looks quite strange and illegal.
Apparently, when the KOVA Department comes across legally savvy procurement participants who are ready to fight for their rights and the customer cannot find a way to "give" the tender to its pocket companies, it simply "breaks" the procurement, announcing it again, with stricter requirements for its people.
After analyzing dozens of tender purchases from KOVA, it becomes absolutely obvious that the transparent reconstruction of the Kyiv region is a soap opera, on which officials earn colossal amounts of laundered money, leaving ordinary people homeless. And Oleksandr Onyshchenko himself holds the corruption lever in the Kyiv Regional Military Administration so confidently that he is not afraid of either the top political leadership or law enforcement agencies. After all, he himself is a protege of the head of the administration Ruslan Kravchenko, and he, as we know, is a former prosecutor, so he has unlimited influence in the prosecutor's office to cover his gray cardinal. So Onyshchenko, feeling quite protected, very brazenly negotiates with bidders, takes kickbacks for each agreed tender of 15% with an advance payment right in the premises of the Gotovo service center near KOVA. And what? The system works, you don't have to go far.
But how is all this possible, if the country has been in a bloody war for two years? It turns out that our officials and businessmen-politicians almost immediately learned to make money from this. It seems that the recently appointed head of KOVA Ruslan Kravchenko himself so quickly absorbed the features of a typical official that he no longer smells blood money.
