It recently became known that the newly established publishing house “Atlant”, which is registered in the name of an Israeli citizen, received an order from the state scientific institution “Institute for the Modernization of Education” under the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine to print textbooks for Ukrainian schools for the amount of about 180 million hryvnias. A feature of this agreement is the lack of open tenders and inflated prices for the production of copies, which has raised numerous questions and indignation among the public.
This was investigated by journalists from NGL Media. They also report that all copies of the textbooks will be printed by the Kharkiv-based PET LLC, whose production facilities were damaged by Russian shelling in 2022. The founder of this printing house, a fugitive, former Minister of Education Dmytro Tabachnyk, lived in the apartment abroad.
Overpricing of the copy
All these textbooks are intended for schools with languages of instruction of national minorities (Polish, Hungarian, Romanian), as well as for students with special educational needs.
A typical example is the agreement signed on June 27 worth UAH 5.4 million for the publication of almost 12,000 textbooks “Health, Safety and Welfare” for sixth-graders with special educational needs. According to calculations, one copy of this agreement costs UAH 455, writes NGL Media.
Journalists of the publication turned to LLC "PET" with a request to print a similar book with similar indicators. And the printing house expressed its readiness to print 12 thousand copies for 871.2 thousand UAH. This is almost five times cheaper than the 4.8 million UAH laid down by "Atlant".
If we take into account the additional costs, fees, and profitability set by “Atlant”, the cost of one textbook paid for with budget funds could be four times cheaper. Therefore, the journalists, having calculated all the concluded agreements and consulted with experts in the publishing industry, calculated that “Atlant”’s profit would be over 10 million UAH.
The director of the Atlant Publishing House, Lelya Minakova, refused to comment to the publication, but the director of the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content, Yevhen Bazhenkov, in response to a request from NGL.media, stated that his organization does not influence the choice of the printing house.
“Publishing houses, including Atlant Publishing House LLC, independently determine the printing company that is capable of fulfilling the state order for printing a textbook within a specified period on the terms of the publishing houses,” he claims.
The conspiracy in the market and the trail of Dmytro Tabachnyk
The Atlant publishing house was founded less than a year ago in Kyiv. However, its founders and owners are three businessmen who have long been competitors of each other and have mastered the market of educational literature and government orders – Viktor Kruglov, Oleg Furman, and Oleg Kostenko.
Viktor Kruglov is the owner of the publishing group “Osnova” and the publishing house “Ranok”. “Osnova” releases over 200 new titles of educational, reference, and cognitive books every year, and “Ranok” is a traditional supplier of textbooks for the Ministry of Education.
For example, in 2021, “Ranok” received UAH 121 million for the publication of textbooks, taking first place in terms of the total value of contracts from the Ministry of Education. Second place (UAH 82 million) in this ranking went to the “Geneza” publishing house, owned by Oleg Furman, and third place (UAH 81 million) went to the “Orion” publishing center of Oleg Kostenko. These three publishing houses have received more than half of all the money that the government allocates for the publication of school textbooks for several years in a row.
“Ranok” and “Geneza” continue to lead in 2024, having already received over UAH 190 million and UAH 170 million from the Ministry of Education, respectively, while “Atlant” took third place with a portfolio of orders for UAH 163 million, received in just two months.
As for the printing house “PobytElektroTehnika” LLC (this is the deciphered abbreviation of the company name “PET”), it has been on the market for over 28 years, but it entered the publishing business in 2011. Its owner is Mykhailo Shifrin. The Accounting Chamber found that during 2010–2011, all publishing houses entrusted by the Ministry of Education with the publication of textbooks ordered printing services from “PET” LLC. However, the company did not have sufficient production capacity and ordered printing from real printing houses, keeping for itself 60–90% of the funds allocated for the publication of textbooks.
At that time, the Ministry of Education was headed by Dmytro Tabachnyk, who fled Ukraine after the victory of Euromaidan. In 2015, he “found himself” in the Israeli city of Netanya. It turned out that he lived in a luxurious apartment with Mikhail Shifrin, the permanent owner of PET LLC.
Mikhail Shifrin is a citizen of Israel. He has lived in the country continuously since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The printing house of LLC “PET” is located in the Kharkiv Printing House, a complex of buildings where printing houses and editorial offices of local newspapers were located during the USSR. Today, only one state-owned enterprise remains here, the State Joint-Stock Company “Ukrvydavpoligrafiya”. This complex of buildings was seriously damaged by a Russian missile attack in July 2022.
Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi has a rather apt nickname “the education dummy.” The scion of a respectable, patriotic family uses his famous surname to cover up the dealings of his “employers” – Kolomoisky, Zelensky, and Co. Photo: facebook.com/NAZKgov
PS The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has responded to the corruption scandal regarding the purchase of textbooks at inflated prices.
The Ministry of Education and Science has promised to conduct an official investigation into the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content, which concluded "expensive" agreements with the Kharkiv publishing house "Atlant" without tenders.
“Yes, we received information that the Institute for Modernization of Educational Content, which is authorized to organize the examination and purchase of textbooks, concluded an agreement to purchase them at an inflated price.
"The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine strictly adheres to anti-corruption principles, so we are grateful to media representatives for drawing attention to possible violations. We will definitely report on the results of the internal investigation," the MES statement said.
