The Okhmatdyt children's hospital, destroyed by a Russian missile attack, was until recently in the news about a charity meeting. However, after the announcement of the restoration competition, it found itself in scandals due to the dubious winner.
On July 8, during a Russian attack, the capital's Okhmatdyt children's hospital was hit directly by dozens of different types of missiles. As a result of the strike, fifty people were injured; unfortunately, there were no casualties. The missile also completely destroyed the toxicology building and damaged four more. 10 surgical departments, 5 oncology departments, 2 somatic departments, intensive care, 2 intensive care units, operating rooms, radiology and radiation therapy departments, and part of the oncohematology laboratory were damaged.
All concerned citizens and businesses in Ukraine and abroad began to make donations in order to rebuild the hospital as quickly as possible. As of August 3, the total amount of funds collected for the restoration of Okhmatdyt amounted to about 1.6 billion hryvnia. In particular:
- 312 million hryvnia went directly to the account of the NDSL Okhmatdyt hospital;
- 379 million hryvnia - to the account of the Omkhatdet - Healthy Childhood Charitable Foundation;
- more than 320 million hryvnia was transferred to the account of the Ministry of Health at the National Bank as part of a joint collection of the United24 and Monobank platforms;
- The Howard G. Buffett Foundation allocated $11.2 million to purchase damaged equipment;
- $1 million – received from the government of Lithuania;
- The Ukrainian government allocated 100 million hryvnia.
On July 31, the hospital reported that Bud-Technology LLC won the competition announced by the charitable foundation “Okhmatdet - healthy childhood” among 14 construction companies. The company will carry out routine repairs of the facade and interior decoration of the building of the Okhmatdet complex. The winning company was registered in 2016 in Zaporozhye. Journalists had comments about her.
Lack of equipment and capital: what’s wrong with the first competition
Journalists from the publication “Our Money” found out that the selected company among the participants offered the third most expensive price offer in the amount of UAH 307 million (excluding VAT). In addition, journalists made the following comments regarding Bud-Technology LLC:
- the construction equipment specified in his proposal cannot be used to install facades above the second floor;
- authorized capital of LLC – 5 thousand UAH;
- the company did not download any data about the equipment for installing tiles;
- repair of facade composite panels “Reynaers” and finishing of internal walls with HP panels was twice as expensive as that of the competitors;
- LLC is the general contractor in certain Sensar Development projects of the Zaporozhye developer Mark Marchenko, who was detained for fictitious acts of completed construction work in Zaporozhye and Melitopol;
- Marchenko’s business partner Evgeniy Shalenny, together with Sensar Development director Elena Bartul, ran in the elections to the Zaporozhye City Council from the Servant of the People party.
“During this purchase, the expected cost was not determined. The participants, at their own discretion, announced indicative price offers based on their own assessment of the possible costs required for restoration work,” the National Police noted to Apostrophe.
Law enforcement officers analyzed the activities of the winning enterprise, related companies, directors, and founders. “It has been established that the winner of the competition does not have similar experience, existing fixed assets and a sufficient number of relevant employees to carry out these works,” the department noted.
The National Police recommended canceling this competition and conducting a new procurement using the Prozorro electronic public procurement system.
The announced accompanying tenders for engineering consulting services and technical supervision of repairs also stirred up an additional wave of public criticism. After all, they were going to spend more than 14.5 million UAH on this. The first contract was planned to be concluded with Vasenyev Engineering LLC, which, as Our Money writes, has already tendered UAH 4.40 million this year, mainly from the current customer.
Not a tender, but a competition: why Okhmatdyt ignored Prozorro
Okhmatdyt noted that “the competitive selection carried out is not a tender in the understanding of the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement”, but is a private competition.” At the same time, such criteria as sufficient personnel, the availability of material and technical base, and experience in conducting similar projects in a similar location were taken into account.
“Legal consultants advised us to take advantage of the experience of international companies in conducting tenders. These are specific criteria by which tender participants are assessed. These criteria were taken as a basis and published in advance and transparently as part of the tender... The expert council then calculated these scores based on the documents provided by the participants. As a result, three companies scored the most points. Two of them, as it became known upon subsequent inspection, showed signs of impiety. Therefore, the company that you already know about was recommended,” explained the Okhmatdyt Charitable Foundation.
The hospital delegated the holding of the competition to a charitable organization for a reason. “The most important thing for a hospital is children, so we want to restore the destroyed hospital as quickly as possible. The use of a charitable foundation made it possible to carry out the preliminary tender procedure much faster than with the resources of a hospital, which has limitations, like all government agencies. That is, the procedure through the fund should have been simpler and faster. And this is very important in order to have time to carry out construction work before the onset of cold weather. Also, at that time, the hospital did not have enough financial resources to independently announce a purchase,” the press service of the NDSL “Okhmatdyt” explained to Apostrophe.
New Tender and Reconstruction Council
Against the backdrop of public discontent, the Ministry of Health announced the cancellation of the results of the competition and related tenders and assured that “not a penny of the funds was spent on the restoration of Okhmatdyt.” Despite the fact that the agreement with the LLC was allegedly not signed, the department contacted the police to conduct inspections.
The department also reported that money from the charitable foundation for the restoration of the hospital will be transferred to the account of Okhmatdyt and a new tender will be announced on the Prozorro platform. Now the requirements for construction companies and the criteria for their selection will be coordinated by a specially created Council to control the restoration of destroyed (damaged) buildings, the regulations of which were approved by the Ministry of Health. It will include 15 people.
In particular, the Recovery Council will have 6 representatives of philanthropists who made the largest contributions and the organizers of the collection, one person from the Ministry of Health and one from Okhmatdyt. At the second stage, the Recovery Council must select 7 representatives of public associations, charitable organizations in the field of preventing corruption, protecting the rights of patients, and developing the healthcare sector based on the results of consideration of applications by rating voting.
By design, it should provide public control over compliance with transparency and virtue in the selection of contractors.
