Suits for doctors 40% more expensive, or How the new Ministry of Health is profiting from the pandemic

Suits for doctors 40% more expensive, or How the new Ministry of Health is profiting from the pandemic

For a month and a half now there have been battles over purchasing protective suits for doctors and medical staff against the coronavirus. At first, former minister Illia Yemets tried to make sure the Ministry of Health purchased protection for doctors through its own tender committee and bypassed the ProZorro system, rather than going through international organizations.

And not without reason — because 67 million hryvnias were at stake, money someone wanted to make a nice profit from, writes Member of Parliament Oleksandra Ustinova specially for Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia.

In the end Yemets was fired, and part of those 67 million were indeed sent to international organizations so they could buy masks, respirators and 4700 suits at $12 each, which are supposed to arrive in Ukraine soon.

Unfortunately, Ukraine today does not need 5 or 50 thousand suits to protect the medics who are fighting on this new front for every life, exposing themselves to danger.

Nearly a million are needed, and so the ministry, under its new head Maksym Stepanov, also set about buying suits.

But not through international organizations, which usually offer the lowest prices for such products, but directly.

At first they turned to their state enterprise “Medical Purchases” to buy the suits.

The approximate price per suit that the Ministry of Health and its leadership had planned for was about 400 hryvnias.

The state enterprise “negotiated” a better price and agreed with a Ukrainian manufacturer that they would supply suits at 245 hryvnias apiece, or 40% cheaper thanks to a large batch.

For 90 thousand suits the state would have to pay the Ukrainian manufacturer, from whom volunteers and some hospitals had already been buying suits, 22 million hryvnias.

So the total savings would have been 13,7 million hryvnias.

With that money one could additionally buy 50 thousand more suits for medics.

The tender was conducted according to all quality requirements previously published by the ministry and according to which all regions, hospitals and even volunteers had been procuring suits.

But Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov refused to sign the documents and to buy the suits at the lower price.

The Ministry reannounced the tender, this time using its own tender committee, and believe it or not, in less than a day it found a winner with a price almost 2 times higher than the previous one, namely 488 hryvnias per disposable suit. There’s no need to run tenders now — pandemic, buy as much as you want, at whatever price and from whoever you want.

So instead of 22 million hryvnias, the state will pay 34,8 million hryvnias for the suits, and even the quantity was reduced from 90 thousand to 71 thousand.

Who needs those savings anyway. Back in Bohatyriova’s time they bought everything with a 40% markup — and everything was fine!

Interestingly, the Ministry changed its mind overnight, and to cancel the “cheaper” tender it added another certification requirement, according to which almost everything previously purchased in Ukraine does not fit.

But even if you take into account the need for certification EN 14126:2003, IDT and DSTU EN 14126:2008, first — the Ministry should have set the requirement to comply with this standard from the very beginning, and it should have informed all state purchasers about it, including the purchasing enterprise itself. However, the Ministry did not do this.

Second — and most importantly — the Ministry's price is still astronomical. Because international organizations’ price for a suit meeting this standard is $12 or about 300 hryvnias per piece, which even includes the international organization's commission.

By the way, the number of suits the internationals bought is 14 times smaller: the internationals bought at 300 hryvnias — 4700 suits, while the Ministry of Health, with a huge volume of 71 thousand suits, received a price of 488 hryvnias per unit.

The winning company LLC “Meddive” is a total mystery and has been operating in Ukraine for less than a year.

The firm won its first state tender only recently — less than 2 months ago — on 26 February.

99% of their tenders are coronavirus protection.

But even more interesting is that all the procurements they win are procurements of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or enterprises associated with it.

Overall the company traded for 38 million hryvnias in a month, of which almost 35 million were the Ministry of Health’s purchase of protective suits.

So who is the owner of such a successful company that in just a month on state tenders already receives the largest state contracts worth tens of millions of hryvnias?

On the company’s own website you will not find information about its management or owners.

Screenshot from the company “Meddive” website

But if you dig into the registers, the owners of “Meddive” are people who previously had not been involved in business.

Among them are brother and sister from Chernihiv, Oleksandr Okhrimenko and Anna Shevtsova (maiden name Okhrimenko).

Another owner is doctor Bohdana Vitkovska from Vinnytsia, and her husband Denys manages the company.

Another co-owner of “Meddive” is Natalia Potrebchuk, who recently “received” this company from her husband — Andriy Anatoliyovych Potrebchuk, a retired police colonel who now heads the anti-corruption sector at the Judicial Guard Service.

The Potrebchuk family, like Ms. Vitkovska, are from Vinnytsia.

They are all also connected by another LLC “ATMED”, since Andriy Potrebchuk still receives a salary there, and Ms. Shevtsova used to work there.

Another interesting fact — according to the contract all 71 thousand suits will be delivered to the Ministry of Health by 1 May!

Winning company of the Ministry of Health tender — LLC “Meddive”

What does this mean?

That either unknown people decided to go all in, sold all their property, took out loans, and purchased in advance from China with their own money tens of millions of hryvnias worth of 70 thousand suits for medics that are now lying in warehouses of unknown location, or someone else, far more influential, knew in advance they would win the tender and imported the suits ahead of time.

Moreover, the suits were most likely flown in on special flights that also brought in humanitarian cargo we all awaited and watched on TV.

There was no other transport connection between Ukraine and China during this time.

To explain such high prices for the suits, the Ministry of Health first accused its own state enterprise of allegedly low quality of the goods it intended to buy.

True, neither medics nor previous purchasers or volunteers complained about this product, but someone had to explain the overpayment of 13 million.

But it is worth noting another point — the Chinese company from which the winner “Meddive” purchased 71 thousand suits is hard to find even on Google.

Nanjing Trust Garment Company LTD China — an unknown company that suddenly found another unknown company — a distributor that had not previously traded suits — and together they became the largest suppliers of medical protective suits for medics in Ukraine.

Nanjing Trust Garment Company LTD China — a company with a clean profile

40% “kickbacks” were the standard rate in Yanukovych’s time; judging by the new procurement prices, that rate is successfully returning.

The new Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov, godfather of a trusted partner of Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Member of Parliament Ihor Palytsia? instead of fighting the coronavirus and, first and foremost, protecting medics — decided to “successfully” handle procurements.

Meanwhile media outlets owned by Kolomoyskyi, in particular the UNIAN news agency, which belongs to the 1+1 holding, spread information that supposedly cheap, low-quality suits were to be purchased for Ukrainian doctors.

We no longer know whom to believe; volunteers are exhausted trying to protect doctors with at least the basics.

The number of infected medical workers in Ukraine is a record, while ministry officials continue deciding how best to “divvy up” the money the state allocated to protect those who today save Ukrainians’ lives, sometimes at the cost of their own.

Oleksandra USTINOVA