Recently it became known that the newly created Atlant publishing house, which is registered in the name of an Israeli citizen, received an order for the printing of textbooks for Ukrainian schools in the amount of about 180 million hryvnias from the state scientific institution "Institute of Modernization of Education" under the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The peculiarity of this agreement is the absence of open tenders and inflated prices for the production of copies, which caused numerous questions and outrage among the public.
This was investigated by journalists of NGL Media. They also report that all editions of the textbooks will be printed by Kharkiv PET LLC, whose production facilities were damaged by Russian shelling in 2022. A fugitive, former Minister of Education Dmytro Tabachnyk lived in the foreign apartment of the founder of this printing house.
Inflating the cost of a 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 concluded on June 27 worth UAH 5.4 million for the publication of almost 12,000 textbooks "Health, safety and well-being" for sixth graders with special educational needs. According to the calculations of this agreement, one copy costs UAH 455, NGL Media writes.
Journalists of the publication turned to "PET" LLC with a request to print a similar book with similar indicators. And the printing house expressed its readiness to print 12 thousand copies for UAH 871.2 thousand. This is almost five times cheaper than the UAH 4.8 million pledged by Atlant.
If we take into account the additional costs, fees and profitability laid by "Atlant", the cost of one textbook, paid for with budget funds, could be four times cheaper. Therefore, the journalists, after calculating all the concluded agreements and consulting with experts in the publishing industry, calculated that the profit of "Atlanta" will be more than UAH 10 million.
Director of Atlant Publishing House, Lelya Minakova, refused to comment to the publication, instead, Yevgen Bazhenkov, director of the Institute for Modernization of the Content of Education, stated in response to NGL.media's inquiry that his organization does not influence the choice of the printing house.
"The publishing houses, including Atlant Publishing House LLC, independently determine the printing company that is able to fulfill the state order to print the textbook within the specified time on the terms of the publishing houses," he claims.
Conspiracy on the market and the trail of Dmytro Tabachnyk
"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 contracts - Viktor Kruglov, Oleg Furman and Oleg Kostenko.
Viktor Kruglov is the owner of Osnova publishing group and Ranok publishing house. "Osnova" publishes more than 200 new titles of educational, reference and educational 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 production of textbooks, taking first place in terms of the total value of contracts from the Ministry of Education. The second place (82 million hryvnias) in this rating went to the Geneza publishing house, owned by Oleg Furman, and the third place (81 million hryvnias) went to the publishing center "Orion" of Oleg Kostenko. For several years in a row, these three publishing houses received more than half of all the money allocated by the government for the publication of school textbooks.
"Morning" and "Geneza" continue to lead in 2024, having already received from the Ministry of Education more than UAH 190 million and UAH 170 million, respectively, while "Atlant" took third place with a portfolio of orders for UAH 163 million received in just two months .
As for the "PobutElectroTechnique" LLC printing house (this is the deciphered abbreviation of the company's name "PET"), it has been on the market for over 28 years, but it started publishing 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 polygraphic services from "PET" LLC. However, the company did not have sufficient production capacity and ordered printing from real printing houses, keeping 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 together with Mykhailo Shifrin, the permanent owner of "PET" LLC.
Mykhailo Shifrin is a citizen of Israel. Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he has been living in this country.
The printing house of "PET" LLC is located in Kharkiv's House of Printing - a complex of buildings where, during the times of the USSR, printing offices and editorial offices of local newspapers were located. Currently, there is only one state-owned company, Ukrvydavpoligrafiya JSC. This complex of buildings was seriously damaged by a Russian missile attack in July 2022.
The Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi has a rather apt nickname "education dummy". The descendant of a respectable, patriotic family should use his famous surname to cover the clothes of his "employers" - Kolomoiskyi, Zelenskyi and Co. Photo: facebook.com/NAZKgov
PS The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine reacted to the corruption scandal regarding the purchase of textbooks at inflated prices.
The MES promised to conduct an official investigation into the Institute for the Modernization of the Content of Education, which concluded "expensive" agreements with the Kharkiv publishing house "Atlant" without tenders.
"Yes, we received information that the Institute for the Modernization of the Content of Education, which is authorized to organize the examination and purchase of textbooks, entered into an agreement to purchase them at an inflated cost.
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 official investigation," the Ministry of Education and Culture said in a statement.
