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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Oleksii Baryshevskyi, the owner of the pharma company Link-Medital, visited the Ministry of Health for an entire week in the run-up to the appointment of his manager Ihor Ivashchenko as deputy minister for European integration.
This is described in Lesia Ivanova’s report, “Fear and Squandering at the Ministry of Health,” for the program “Our Money with Denys Bihus.”
Ihor Ivashchenko was appointed deputy minister 27 in May. Before that he 5 years worked as commercial director at LLC “Link-Medital” of Oleksii Baryshevskyi.
Throughout the week before Ivashchenko’s official appointment, from 18 to 25 May, the program’s filming crew recorded on the Ministry of Health’s parking lot Baryshevskyi and various cars used by the businessman. Specifically, journalists observed Baryshevskyi exiting from the ministry’s main entrance or driving away from there with Ivashchenko. The car used by Baryshevskyi was spotted in the ministry’s parking lot even on the day when entries were blocked due to a presidential press conference in the park near the Ministry of Health.
Baryshevskyi is not a member of any working or expert groups at the Ministry of Health – he said this himself in a comment for the program. The businessman denied driving to the ministry, claiming that he drove to the nearby park. At the same time, he did not explain where else he went if not to the Ministry.
Ivashchenko, in his commentary for the program, also could not explain why Baryshevskyi came to the ministry before the appointment, though he did not dispute the visits: “Of course he could have visited, but if you want to say that he had some influence on my appointment or on any of my decisions, there is absolutely none.”
The open competition for the position Ivashchenko now holds was not conducted, Ivashchenko himself said – he was simply called from the minister’s reception and invited for an interview. At the same time, the newly appointed deputy minister assures that no one lobbied for him: “I don’t think anyone advised me; this was solely a matter of communication and interaction with the minister.” He also immediately admitted that before his appointment he had met with Stepanov only twice in his life, for example three years ago during the opening of a dialysis center in Odesa.
Baryshevskyi’s company Link-Medital has been on the Ukrainian medical market for about 10 years and is a well-known player in the field of budget medical procurement. The firm is not a manufacturer – it is a dealer of medicines and medical supplies. In particular, Link-Medital supplies disposable materials for dialysis and also drugs for hemophilia.
In 2018 year, the online publication Our Money noted that the spendables for hemodialysis (for example, disinfectants or fistula needles) that Link-Medital sells in Ukraine are significantly more expensive than what medical institutions buy in neighboring countries – Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Russia. And this difference, the journalists explained, could not be attributed to taxes or customs clearance, since the gap was enormous.
Similar exorbitant prices can be observed for hemophilia drugs as well. In 2017 year, Kyiv City State Administration bought from Link-Medital a batch of FEIBA for hemophiliacs for over 11 million hryvnias. They purchased it at 35 hryvnias per unit of the substance, distributing it in small and large vials, at 500 and 1000 units. The contract price with the KCSA proved to be significantly higher than the prices recorded by Our Money in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Russia at that time. In comparison with them, the KCSA overpaid for FEIBA by one and a half times.
Since its inception, Link-Medital has operated via so-called indirect contracts. This term refers to a supply chain for imported goods where the Ukrainian dealer purchases not directly from the manufacturer but from another intermediary abroad. Ukrainian law forbids dealers from marking up the price of medicines more than 10% after customs clearance, but it does not regulate purchases and sales between intermediaries abroad. Therefore, the price is inflated through the foreign intermediary. The producer price and the actual owner of the intermediary usually remain secret.
Indeed, hemophilia drugs (including the FEIBA mentioned above) have for years been imported by Link-Medital through a Hungarian intermediary – IMMEDEX EUROPE Kft. Its owner is another Hungarian company – IMMEDEX HOLDING Zrt., and its owner is registered as a Hungarian. At the same time, the director of IMMEDEX EUROPE Kft. is Baryshevskyi’s sister – Kateryna Keres. The company was first registered under her when it was created, in 2011. Then a year later Kateryna was removed from the directors, and for a long time the firm was officially not considered related to Link-Medital. However, in spring she was reappointed as the head.
Baryshevskyi refused to discuss “my commercial relations with suppliers of the products.”
Ivashchenko, who held the position of commercial director at Link-Medital during the years when the firm shipped hemophilia drugs through IMMEDEX, also. At first, he said that as commercial director he handled absolutely everything in the firm – contracts, import, customs clearance, sales. But when asked specifically about IMMEDEX, he stated that he had never communicated with representatives of this firm, because he did not work in the hemophilia direction.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Фарм-дилер не зміг пояснити, чому цілий тиждень їздив до МОЗ перед призначенням свого менеджера заступником міністра". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Bihus.Info.
