The state-owned enterprise “63 Boiler-Welding Plant” in Ivano-Frankovsk, founded in 1945 as a front-line auto repair shop, was sold at auction for 2.6 billion hryvnia to the private enterprise “Vestkhim”. Until 2010, the plant belonged to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and then was included in the state concern Ukroboronprom.
The publication "Galka" writes about this.
The starting price at the auction was a little more than 20 million hryvnia, but Westhim immediately offered 127 times more - more than 2.6 billion. Such a sudden overpayment raises the question: why is anyone willing to pay billions for a company that until recently was in bankruptcy? Among the 13 participants in the auction, Westhim offered the maximum amount already in the first round, significantly exceeding the next offer of 320 million hryvnia from Stroyukom LLC from Transcarpathia. The answer may lie in the schemes by which funds for the purchase were obtained.
The owner of Veskhim is Bogdan Pukish, who has recently been actively discussed in the media as a person associated with Putin’s godfather, Viktor Medvedchuk.
Pukish is accused of fulfilling defense orders by producing low-quality products at inflated prices. Moreover, there are serious suspicions that the funds received from these contracts are deliberately misused - they are used for personal enrichment and corruption schemes instead of ensuring the safety of the Ukrainian military. Such activities directly endanger the lives of soldiers; their safety directly depends on the quality of defense supplies. Thus, with funds received from the state due to dubious contracts, Pukish acquired a strategic facility that is important for the country’s defense capability. His ties to the pro-Russian Ukrainian Choice party and involvement in the privatization of defense companies raise serious concerns about the transparency and legality of such agreements.
Even more alarming is that Pukish, according to insiders, plans to use the plant’s territory for other purposes. Instead of preserving the industrial site, he probably intends to demolish the plant and build a residential complex in its place. Such a step could lead to the destruction of an important industrial asset critical to Ukraine's national security.
This is not the only case when property associated with Medvedchuk’s people comes into account. Recently, in the Lviv region, the assets of the enterprise of the relatives of Medvedchuk and Kazak worth UAH 16 million were arrested and transferred to ARMA. This indicates the scale of the schemes in which individuals close to Ukraine’s enemies continue to benefit from critical assets.
This situation once again demonstrates that the state must strengthen control over the sale of strategic enterprises, especially defense enterprises, which previously belonged, for example, to the Ministry of Defense or Ukroboronprom. The SBU must closely monitor such agreements to ensure that important assets do not fall into the hands of individuals with pro-Russian ties. This is a matter of national security, and only timely actions by security forces can prevent risks that threaten the defense capability of Ukraine.
