How business looks for holes in the rules of billion-dollar tenders of the State Logistics Operator: combat results

Three months ago, procurement of the “State Logistics Operator” began. Obviously, the reform in terms of clothing support for the Ministry of Defense looks convincing. But business is learning to look for holes in the rules.

According to the State Logistics Operator, which has been purchasing for the Ministry of Defense since the end of 2023, savings amounted to UAH 2.9 billion on contracts for the supply of clothing, disposable tableware and fuel totaling UAH 12 billion. Savings in this case are a reduction in prices compared to previous purchases by the Ministry of Defense itself.

Progress in the success of procedures is also obvious - DOT cancels purchases half as often as the Ministry of Defense. According to calculations by military purchaser Nelly Stelmakh, at the Ministry of Defense the overall percentage of unsuccessful/canceled lots was more than 30%. And “DOT” has 15%.

At the same time, according to the observations of “Our Pennies”, business is adapting to the strict rules of “DOT”.

This is especially noticeable in the way firms give up their auction victories. For example, this situation is happening right now at auctions for battle results totaling UAH 200 million.

This tender for different types of results is divided into 10 lots. And for almost each of them the competition is about 10 firms. However, it seems that the participants at the auction are desperately bargaining, and then reach some kind of agreement among themselves and refuse cheaper offers. This is done by not providing certain tender documents.

For example, “Kharkiv Plant of Personal Protective Equipment” in lot No. 1 based on the results of A-30, Type 5 fell from the expected price of 15 million UAH to 8.67 million UAH and with this result won the auction. The customer discovered that the company did not provide an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities as part of the tender proposal, and gave the legally required 24 hours to provide this document. The plant eventually provided it and concluded an agreement at its auction price of 289 UAH per total, which was 43% cheaper than the expected price of the lot.

In the next lot No. 2, according to the same results, “Kharkiv Plant” won with the same discount of 43% (23.12 million UAH) and also did not immediately provide an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. But this time, when the customer gave the company a day to add the document, the company refused to do so. Accordingly, it was rejected from the auction and the customer moved on to evaluate the next participants.

However, the following also did not add documents that were not submitted as part of the proposals. For example, the Anva company (UAH 28.73 million) did not want to provide a certificate of fulfillment of similar agreements, which it should have done itself. That is, this is not a certificate that is obtained from some government bureaucrats, but the company would simply have to report its contracts itself. But she didn't want to. Another Extreme-Tex participant did not want to submit financial reporting data.

As a result of such refusals, the turn came to LLC Garment Factory Galant, whose offer of 38.40 million UAH is already only 4% cheaper than the expected cost. The difference with the auction winner, Kharkov Plant, is UAH 15 million. That is, this is the amount that the “State Logistics Operator” will be forced to pay only for the fact that the first auction winner abandoned his result. And if Galant refuses to upload documents that it also “prudently” did not upload immediately, they will move on to an even more expensive offer.

Let us note that the Kharkov Plant did everything according to the law. The company provided bid security in the amount of 1% of the expected price of the lot. The customer would have to take the bank guarantee for himself if the participant abandoned his victory without any explanation at all. However, the law says that if a company for some reason simply does not correct the deficiency in its offer within 24 hours, then the guarantee will not be taken away from it. Accordingly, the plant, which refused to upload an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities in one lot of the tender and uploaded it in another, acted absolutely deliberately. And from the analysis of other lots of this tender based on the results, it is obvious that a number of other companies also deliberately acted.

Unfortunately, this is legal behavior (unless the government comes up with some kind of safety net, such as taking away a bank guarantee if documents are not provided after 24 hours, but this is unlikely; or law enforcement officers will receive data from secret investigative actions against the conspirators, but this is even less likely; well and don’t rely on the AMCU, which is capable of not noticing any cartel in front of its nose). Therefore, as of now, the State Rear Operator does not have any special leverage. Is it possible to further reduce the expected cost of the results for the next auction in order to reduce the margin for the cartel conspirators.