Ministry of Defense and new corruption? Well, there have been no scandals for a long time. Or is everything not so simple?
Yesterday, ngl.media published material about bunkers and the purchase of flasks for 355 hryvnia. The authors compared prices on the Internet and in the purchase of the National Guard, where 70 and 150 each, and decided that the bunker had overpaid quite a bit.
Overpaid. But is this really cheating?
1. No one likes concluding contracts out of necessity and through direct contracts. Believe me, DOT is much more pleasant to report how much he saved and how many trades he conducted in the Prozorro system. It is easier for a public anti-corruption activist to rummage through trades on the Internet than to shake out contracts by force.
Direct contracts immediately increase attention to the transaction significantly, as well as suspicions that the supplier did not just walk in off the street. But there are times when stars become cancer, Mercury is exclusively retrograde and there is no way without direct transactions. Like in the second quarter with products.
The bunker announced tenders for flasks twice – in January and April. And if you are not too lazy and go to the tender page, you can find out that they should have been cancelled, that the participants did not receive a quality certificate for the flask.
At this point, we need to make a significant remark - DOT cannot buy anything, even if it is super cool, American, Norwegian, Ukrainian, and three times cheaper on the market, if it does not meet the technical specifications. The technical specifications for the product are issued by the Logistics Forces Command (in some places I really don’t like it, but there are definitely normal and sane people there).
For example, for the specifications for a sleeping bag, an American sample was taken (for our teak and not only), and on the basis of this ripped-up sample, technical specifications were developed.
That is, from now on we completely forget about the bunker. He may have overpaid, but others did not meet the technical conditions.
Go ahead. In KSL and quality management.
Were the technical conditions specified for a specific manufacturer? Because this is exactly what the article hints at, indicating that the agreement was concluded with the Coltrane company, which is essentially a shell company.
Colleagues were not mistaken in terms of the company’s history; there are no complaints. But those who, as part of the work of the State Administrative Department of the Moscow Region, have studied the entire pedigree of the godfathers of the food mafia, nothing will surprise them. (By the way, a new season for accepting applications starts today in grubs. They say that the new star of the season will be avocado. Anyone who has read articles about how this is now an unprofitable vegetable will understand the whole pitfall of the situation). But today about flasks.
No matter what companies some Varvara Nemidorovna registers, the same people apply for certificates, and these are not signatories of contracts.
So, if the technical conditions were rewritten, at least in January, and the agreements were concluded in July, we could talk about collusion. But the technical specifications were written in 2018. For them, the American flask was taken as a model.
According to these requirements, the flask must be made from a thermoplastic blow molding material - Eastman Tritan Copolyester TX 1001 polyester or equivalent, the material must be clean, durable, microwave-resistant, odor-resistant and BPA-free.
As a matter of fact, the whole story rests on the requirements for this plastic. And not in the words “Property of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, not for sale.” Because such an inscription must be contained on everything supplied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine - flasks, jackets, pants, underpants, bras and sleeping bags.
By the way, on a certain percentage of those same scandalous Reznikov jackets there were no tags. But this inscription cannot be considered discriminatory, because otherwise there is no need to start cutting out a jacket for the army. Because the tag with this inscription must be sewn in such a way that it cannot be sewn on top or torn off without recutting the product.
Therefore, we only have one point left: such a flask can be produced by virtually one manufacturer - Taizhou Huangyan Sigg Mold Co., Ltd.
As far as the author was able to find out, this manufacturer was found by suppliers who sold all kitchen utensils to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. (Let’s return once again to the question that it’s not the sign companies that matter, although I would like some kind of respectable branding, and not the “Horns and Rakotica” offices).
So for 4 years now, other “Ukrainian” manufacturers (I won’t say anything for now, where those Ukrainian jackets and combat boots are made, but you can’t see a log in your own eye like cod in someone else’s socks) have been unsuccessfully trying to enter this not so large segment of the market .
Of course, in the manufacturer's version it sounds like the damned corrupt officials have sold themselves to others and are not letting the good ones in. But in the version of representatives of the Moscow Region it sounds different: “Can we stop carrying the same crap for 4 years and make normal plastic.”
In fact, this is the only place where it is worth having a detailed discussion and discussion.
Regarding the point about the procedure being done for the supplier, at least according to my sources (not at the bunker!), the flasks had been in the warehouse since 2022 and they were discovered as a result of a market survey. The marking about the year of manufacture, as the interlocutors assure, is on the product.
One way or another, the article caused a resonance in law enforcement agencies, as evidenced by the following quote. “We were already with NABU and the State Bureau of Investigation, but you came first.”
And now another example from the story of technical specifications and sharpening. Last year, the public anti-corruption campaign under the Ministry of Defense probably spent a good 4 months discussing whether to start a public scandal over the ankle boots, where there is an obvious monopoly of “Talanlegprom”, which, judging by the reviews of competitors, was carefully formed thanks to TU for 17 years. But those months of studying the market led to one conclusion - the circle of competitors can only be expanded by removing the cast sole from the product, which the military will not do. And products from other manufacturers still look much worse.
The only thing that was possible to do then - here we should give credit to the head of the anti-corruption department of the Moscow Region, Sergei Stepanyan - was to get Talanlegrom to waive the copyright on the tread pattern.
In the case of flasks, the solution is really simple - an independent quality assessment. Are these standards really discriminatory, can another composition be of the same quality, or is this just a dubious competition.
And... I present the next topic for scandal - now the army lacks 30% of men's underpants.
