The Fake Printing House of Volodymyr Groysman Received Almost 1,7 Million Hryvnias from the State Budget

The fake printing house of Volodymyr Groysman received almost 1,7 million hryvnias from the state budget

Many people recently, when checking their mailboxes, found a free newspaper there called "Pension Reform."

A topical issue, to be sure. But—wait. The elections are still far off, and the newspaper clearly looks like a classic example of pre-election campaigning. Who decided to remind voters of themselves so far in advance? Just look at the front page and everything becomes clear—the top third is taken up by a photo that looks almost like a biblical scene: Prime Minister Groysman bends down to elderly women and, with a feigned attentiveness and a look of understanding, listens to the hard truth about small pensions and expensive medicine.

When you examine the publication, it’s easy to see: everything here is devoted to glorifying the achievements of one person—Volodymyr Borysovych Groysman! "We will carry out a capital repair of the country," "Pensions will increase for 9 million pensioners," "We stabilized the economy"—the paper’s pages are rife with headlines like these. If it weren’t for the calendar, one might think the presidential election were this October and that the current head of government intends to win. As we flip through the paper further, it immediately becomes noticeable that the image of President Poroshenko is presented as if he were the lesser brother—a small photo and a short quote. Who allowed such audacity and breach of hierarchy? We look at the imprint. The paper is named "information bulletin for September 2017" and it states that it was "prepared for print by the Ministry of Information Policy."

If anyone has forgotten, this agency was created in 2014 to counter Russian propaganda and is still headed by no one other than Poroshenko’s close ally and godfather Yuriy Stets. The first thing that raises concern is that the imprint contains no information about the bulletin’s state registration with the Ministry of Justice as a printed mass media outlet, even though by its form and content the publication has all the characteristics of such a medium. Under current law, a periodical release without registration is not permitted. Other imprint information is also prepared in violation of the law—the address of the printing house where the modest run of the information bulletin was supposedly produced is not indicated, despite publishers declaring an allegedly convincing print run of 3 million copies!!!

So what is this secret printing house that supposedly produced a multi-million run of the information bulletin praising Groysman, the address of which the Ministry of Information Policy’s contractors are hiding? Carefully checking the list of state tenders for 2017, we find that in July of this year the ministry announced a tender to produce printed materials with the same circulation for the amount of 1,680 million hryvnias. And the winner of that tender was a private enterprise, "Kompaniya Apollon," from Lviv.

Given the claimed print run, this should have been a large printing enterprise, yet there is no company by that name in the State Register of Publishing Entities! Although a mandatory condition for participating in the tender was that the ministry required participants to have equipment and material-technical resources documented. Oddly enough, "Kompaniya Apollon" provided such documents. From the lease agreements attached to the tender documentation it follows that this company allegedly operates as many as 17 units of various printing equipment from the world’s best manufacturers. Moreover, according to the tender documents, "Kompaniya Apollon" supposedly operates a printing press from the Swiss firm "Wifag."

There is only one printing press of that firm in Ukraine, and it belongs to another company. According to the official representative of Wifag, Roman Hordeyev, no other such machines were delivered to Ukraine. This implies that "Kompaniya Apollon" has no connection to that machine and that the documents on the basis of which the ministry transferred funds are fictitious. But that’s not all the surprises. All the equipment declared in the documents is supposedly located in leased premises totaling only 701 square meters. Experts say that on such an area you could barely fit half of the claimed printing equipment—and only disassembled. To find out what kind of phantom printing house "Kompaniya Apollon" really is, we went to the address the company listed as the location of this equipment in Lviv, on Haiduchka Street, 1. What a disappointment and surprise when we found semi-abandoned and empty buildings of the former Ekskavatsiya factory being rented out. There was no hint of a printing house. The security guards on the premises assured us that there had never been a printing house here.

The photo shows the workshop where, according to the documents, the printing equipment supposedly used to produce the newspapers for Groysman was located. There is nothing here! All right, maybe the printing house is located at Kompaniya Apollon’s registration address? We went to Lviv, Yavornytskoho Street, 8/82. It turns out that here too—no luck, because this is an ordinary residential apartment where you might place a printer, but it’s impossible to print a multi-million-copy bulletin on newsprint! The conclusion is this: since the tender winner does not own a printing house—neither its own nor rented—3 million newspapers could not have been produced by it. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the Ministry of Information Policy from transferring budget funds of almost 1,7 million hryvnias to the account of this swindler company. Or perhaps that was exactly the goal of the Ministry of Information Policy officials?

Hiding behind good intentions—the popularization of their patron Groysman—they deliberately failed to verify the information in the tender documentation and selected as the winner a firm whose task was not to print newspapers but to channel budget money through its accounts? As a result, instead of PR, Volodymyr Groysman gained only disgrace, and not because he tried to advertise himself dishonestly at the state’s expense, but because he allowed his subordinates to squander money using his name. ...In the 18th century, Count Potemkin, trying to please Catherine II, built decorative, fake settlements in southern Ukraine. Since then, the term "Potemkin village" has become a symbol of deception and presenting the desired as real. Nearly three hundred years have passed, and in the 21st century the Ministry of Information Policy, headed by the President’s godfather Yuriy Stets, is engaged in the same kind of deception! And in currying favor with Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman using newspapers printed in non-existent printing houses, albeit paid for with real money from the budget. Which means—with our taxes.

Larisa MAKSIMETS, newspaper Express