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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
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National Cancer Institute after Fistal: a new facade over old rot
19 June 2025 NABU/SAP officially reported exposing a scheme that embezzled 231 million hryvnias at the institution. It involved purchases of medical equipment at artificially inflated prices under global contracts totaling more than 1,4 billion hryvnias.
The investigation unambiguously named Herman Fistal, the de facto head of the largest group of supplier companies, as the main figure, shadow beneficiary, and architect of this scheme. Fistal’s cronies and his office deputies, who rotated in the leadership chairs at the NCI, built for years a system where the budget was siphoned off through meticulously written technical specifications, and cancer patients were considered solely an inexhaustible resource for super-profits.
It seemed that the multi-year rule of this tender mafia had come to an end. But today, looking at what is happening within the NCI under the leadership of General Director Stepan Krulko, a much more frightening and deeper diagnosis becomes clear. This was not reform, not a cleansing, and not a victory over corruption. It was a classic raider takeover of a high-level state institution. The territory was cleared for Kostyantyn Haievskyi’s medical empire.
Krulko 8 years worked as chief physician of the private medical facility TomoClinic in Kropyvnytskyi, a key Haievskyi asset.
Haievskyi’s empire was built for years on a brilliantly simple intersection of interests: privatization of profits through a network of private clinics, large-scale distribution of radiology equipment, and steady absorption of state funds. When someone from such a structure heads a state monopoly institute, he does not leave his private business at the door. He turns his state position into the most profitable parallel business in the country.
Stepan Krulko effectively launched a model of hybrid shadow privatization at the NCI. In this perverted business model, the state and taxpayers cover all losses and expenses: they pay utilities for massive buildings, buy expensive equipment, and provide base salaries for staff. All the super-profits, however, are carefully accumulated, capitalized, and siphoned off into the shadows by a team of private managers.
The money-extraction process begins with diagnostic imaging. When, at the end of 2025, the scheduling system for CT and MRI at the institute effectively collapsed, creating unprecedented queues, Krulko publicly shrugged his shoulders.
In the medical business, an artificially created queue for a state scanner is the most effective tool. When a state scanner suddenly “breaks,” or when the wait for a vital examination stretches to two months, a seriously ill person has no choice. They are forced to take money where the hospital system implicitly directs them—to partner private diagnostic centers, which miraculously always have open slots and are often connected to the orbit of the new NCI leaders. Scandals flare up right in offices when relatives of patients are openly made to understand: there is no free chemotherapy, but the drug can be “found” at the pharmacy across the street at a sky-high price.
A major tender terror is also underway. The new administration introduced a mechanism of administrative sadism toward independent suppliers on Prozorro. If a non-systemic player accidentally enters the bidding and wins by offering an honest price, they instantly fall into bureaucratic hell. The institute’s administration artificially blocks goods acceptance: lawyers find faults in accompanying documents, trucks are not allowed into warehouses, and acceptance-transfer acts are not signed for weeks. As soon as contractual delivery deadlines pass, the NCI’s legal department immediately levies massive fines and penalties against the independent business for alleged missed deadlines. It is thanks to this cleanup that things like what happened in February occur, when NCI subcontracts worth half a billion hryvnias began to be systematically handed to a firm with a charter capital of 375 hryvnias. The founder of this shell company is Volodymyr Dukhovych, whose ties lead to the shadow schemes of former top officials.
To be continued...
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