The Report of the MOD’s Public Anti-Corruption Council on last year's work
After the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine returned to the open system of procurement of rear support through the Prozorro system in June 2023, 8 billion hryvnias were saved. Almost half of them are in food tenders. This became known during the Report of the MOD’s Public Anti-Corruption Council on last year's work.
This public institution was formed after a series of scandals in the Ministry of Defense. Its composition was chosen using the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption online platform. "Today, we have lawyers, economists, journalists, volunteers, which indicates that the entire segment of society is represented," emphasized Yevhen Hrushovets, head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council. According to Tetiana Nikolaienko, a Committee on Communications, Human Resources, and Expert Discussions member, the Council began investigating food purchase contracts.
"Even then, we saw that the problem of these contracts is more systemic than just eggs for 17 hryvnias or apples for 51 hryvnias, which we wrote about as journalists. The biggest problem was the absolute opacity of the system when the ministry bought three-day food for which it paid 146 hryvnias. Still, suppliers bring individual products to the units, and only their price is deducted from these 146 hryvnias," she explained.
Another important area of work in 2023 was monitoring the current state of arms procurement and searching for opportunities to improve the procurement system. In general, it was noted that Ukraine's biggest challenge in the field of procurement remains the issue of competition and prices. Namely, overcoming the collusion of suppliers in the market. Viktor Prudkovskikh, the Secretary of the Council and a member of the Commission on Communications, Human Resources, and Expert Discussions, talked about the expectations of changes in procurement. In particular, he touched on the prospects of creating a state rear operator (SRO), which was announced in the spring of 2023.
"In mid-December, with the participation of the Minister of Defense and the Commander-in-Chief, the state rear operator (SRO), itself and the concept of its food procurement, which it will use, were presented. It contained the main parameters our Council recommended to the Ministry, including separating the logistics and product components. However, today, unfortunately, the department is discussing deploying the operator's activities in hybrid options, where the old procurement system will be preserved in any case," – the expert stated.
Anastasia Shuba, Deputy Chairman of the Council and Commission for Monitoring Legislation and Rulemaking Activity member, touched on another problem. According to her, the state anti-corruption program in the Ministry of Defense has not been implemented for many years. "Last summer, we started to work on providing support to the Ministry for implementing those measures defined by the State Anti-corruption Program. One of them is the creation of an independent state quality assurance body. The corresponding department in the structure of the Ministry of Defense cannot be independent a priori. However, eight months have passed since they started discussing the need to create such a body, and it still hasn't been done. At the same time, we have no hope that it will be created because we see like-minded people in the National Agency on the Prevention of Corruption," Anastasia Shuba said.
Ukraine is a country where society has a voice, and the fact that citizens are trying to regulate the system of spending defense funds on their own to push bodies and ministries to implement procedures faster indicates that society and democracy in Ukraine are alive.
Olena Tregub, a Commission for Monitoring Legislation and Rulemaking Activities member, expressed this opinion. She spoke about how it causes surprise and admiration among international partners. They are very interested in the fact that there are inspectors from the people in Ukraine.
"All over the world, our enemies spread the narrative that we are a corrupt country and we don't need to be helped because we steal everything. This is not true. Ukraine is not Afghanistan. The fact that we can check purchases and carry out product quality examinations at our own expense is a great success for Ukraine," Olena Tregub emphasized.
The original article – on the website of the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center