Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The entire electronic ticket sale system on the railway today is controlled not by Ukrzaliznytsia, but by private LLC UNIT, which the state has no influence over today.
This is stated in a report by Nadiya Burdiey.
The very tender, as a result of which UNIT received the contract to implement the online ticket sale program, Ukrzaliznytsia conducted behind closed doors. Information about it was not published in the State Tender Bulletin.
Although this happened several years ago, to this day the company keeps everything secret. Thus, in response to a TV program inquiry, railway workers answered that information about purchases and contract terms is not available on the basis of an order of Ukrzaliznytsia itself from 2010 year.
But as journalists found out through the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, the tender participants at the time were LLC ASKO and LLC UNIT. The winner was the latter, and with the higher price. After the tender, UNIT commissioned work exactly from ASKO. And since the company did not pay for the work, the information ended up in the court register.
Ukrzaliznytsia is not for nothing hiding data about the tender, because its winner is not an accidental company. By 2011 year, co-founder of UNIT was Vadym Dmytrenko. In April 2011 year he took the post of head of the main IT department of Ukrzaliznytsia. After his appointment, Ukrzaliznytsia began implementing the electronic ticket sale system, a contract for which UNIT receives.
The patent author for the ordered, paid for, and implemented system sold to Ukrzaliznytsia is another co-owner of UNIT, Serhiy Rokhvarh. Therefore, in addition to payment for development and maintenance of the system, the company also wants 5 hryvnias from each ticket sold. At the end of last year the firm even went to court demanding Ukrzaliznytsia pay 10 million hryvnias in royalties.
Acting CEO of Ukrzaliznytsia Maksym Blank says that today there are two contracts with UNIT. Under one, from each ticket the private firm received 5 hryvnias, and under the other this figure was zero. Both contracts were signed by the head of the Main Information and Computing Center Muryzin V.S. Today, when there is a need to pay 5 per ticket, a court proceeding is underway.
However, the developer has a significant leverage—the entire Ukrzaliznytsia ticket sale system is controlled by UNIT, both technically and financially.
UNIT independently chose the technical solution for implementing the payment gateway. And today clients are in a tight dependency, primarily regarding credit card payment mechanisms. "Today when concluding contracts with acquiring banks UNIT demands a transaction fee for the purchase of an electronic ticket," said interim head of the corporate information department of Ukrzaliznytsia Bogdan Korban.
Moreover, today it is not Ukrzaliznytsia, but UNIT that determines who is allowed to sell railway tickets and who is not. In November 2014 year the firm disconnected the Distribution Center of the Ministry of Infrastructure from selling tickets. Later it refused state Oschadbank to sell Ukrzaliznytsia's tickets,
Blank says that the state company agreed with UNIT that the firm would operate as the system developer, and the ability to sell tickets was currently blocked for it. But TV program journalists found that the LLC calmly sells tickets and continues on its own site plategka.com.
This situation arose because real control over electronic ticket sales today is not in Ukrzaliznytsia, but in its hired contractor. Moreover, the state company acknowledges that today UNIT can disconnect the system at any moment for no legal reason.
As a reminder, a December 2014 year check by the State Financial Inspection revealed that the State Enterprise Polygraph Plant Ukraina of the National Bank paid UNIT at least 279 million hryvnias from mid 2013 to mid 2014 year for applying an unnecessary barcode to targeted stamps. As journalists from the TV program Our Money found out, this company belongs to ex-minister Edward Stavytsky. Later UNIT issued a press release denying any connection to Stavytsky, and stated that the owners of the Cyprus Ferrero Holdings Ltd are company employees.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Четвертий рік приватна фірма контролює продаж «Укрзалізницею» квитків онлайн. Заробіток: 5 гривень – з квитка.". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Bihus.Info.