Weapons at any cost: what the NYT did not tell about Morales' weapons supplier

The purchase of weapons for Ukraine is increasingly becoming a topic of media interest. And although none of the investigations caused even approximately the same scandal as those around eggs and jackets, this topic is worth more than one thriller series on Netflix and HBO.

Over the weekend, The New York Times published another article about arms supplies to Ukraine. This time its main character is a certain Mark Morales, owner of the Global Ordnance company.

Half a dozen men gathered last month after lunch in the penthouse bar of one of Kyiv's most luxurious hotels to discuss the lucrative business of arming Ukrainian troops. The group included Ukrainian military and government officials, who are always looking for explosive shells to drop on Russian soldiers. The spotlight was on their fellow host, a Florida gun contractor named Mark Morales, who regaled them with stories about his new $10 million yacht, Trigger Happy, and his search for someone to manage his company's nine-figure portfolio. Actually, why not the first shots of the series?

According to the publication, Morales is one of the most important arms suppliers to Ukraine.

“The Pentagon awarded his company about $1 billion in contracts, mostly for ammunition. And records show that he created approximately $200 million in additional business by selling weapons directly to Ukrainians.

He recalls that the Biden Administration has sent Ukraine more than $40 billion in security assistance, including advanced weapons, HIMARS and Patriot. But the role of people like Morales is to provide mostly inferior quality or Soviet-caliber ammunition, which they drag from all over the world.

What does the publication focus on? That Morales is building his contacts in Ukraine through two people - Vladimir Koifman and Denis Vanash.

Koyfman, a Ukrainian-American with years of experience as an adviser to the Ukrainian National Guard, enlisted during the Russian invasion. His exact military duties are unknown. In a conversation with the publication, he identified himself as a senior sergeant of the territorial defense forces of Ukraine, where he allegedly trains soldiers.

In addition to Koyfman, as noted in the publication, Morales hired Denis Vanash, a longtime adviser to the Minister of Defense. Vanash left his position at the start of the war to communicate with the Ministry of Defense on behalf of Global Ordnance, the authors write.

If you google it, you can additionally find out that Vanash graduated from the Kiev-Mohyla Academy and is the founder of the law firm Vanash Urban Lawyers. He was deputy chairman of the Odessa Regional State Administration Maxim Kutsy. Was fired in 2020. Also on some sites Vanash was associated with Andrei Vavrysh.

“The agreements with Morales are reminiscent of Ukraine’s past, when arms dealers developed friendly relations with the military, contracts were signed in secret, and arms dealers often found themselves under investigation,” the newspaper writes.

Although almost every critical thesis in the article has objections from the other side. What, for example, cannot be said about the previous text about Sergei Pashinsky and “Ukrainian armored vehicles”. Therefore, the text contains assurances from the company’s adviser that it is acting within the law.

Despite the fact that The NYT calls Morales a successful supplier, the publication still recalls a case when an American company was under investigation.

At the start of the war, state-owned Ukrinmash negotiated a deal with an Egyptian seller for about $65 million to purchase nearly 200 vehicles. Then the deal stalled. And soon after, Morales entered into a contract to supply similar vehicles at similar prices. The difference was that Global Ordnance, rather than a state-owned company, made a profit. And the Ukrainian budget for purchases also had nothing.

This is not the only story when a concluded contract for some reason stops being executed, and then another company enters the arena. True, sometimes with a similar or higher price offer. Here you must always understand whether the previous contract was paid for in order to understand whether this is only a competitive struggle between two companies, or whether there is also playing along on the part of officials.

However, there was a further problem with the delivery of Global Ordnance, because according to Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Gavrilov, the equipment arrived in poor condition and this became the reason for an investigation by anti-corruption authorities.

Van Brunt, an adviser to the company, told the NYT that the Ukrainian government regularly investigates military transactions. “This is an ‘investigation,’ and to confuse it with what the public may understand to be an investigation would be inappropriate,” he wrote in an email. He declined to comment on the deal itself.

Perhaps it would have been much more difficult for van Brunt to do this if the journalist had shown him the part of the SASU act that talked about this contract. And from which it is clear that during the first deliveries, military units had serious complaints about the company’s cars.

Here is this fragment: “the shortcomings have not been fully eliminated (depending on the car: the rear fuel tank plug is missing; the rear view camera does not work; water gets into the car interior during rainfall on the driver’s side; the seam of the machine gunner’s hatch is not fully welded (visible) gap between the turret hatch and the vehicle body); there is no manual throttle control mechanism on the driver’s instrument panel; the troop compartment door lock is faulty (door). does not close tightly); the gearshift lever and gearbox are not secured in the car interior; there is no lock for the passenger hatch in the open position.”

Unfortunately, this is not the only such story about Global Ordnance.

Thus, according to the audit materials, GASU was supposed to supply 152 rounds under one of the contracts.

The company began to fulfill the contract, but in April the Ministry of Defense informed Global Ordnance in a letter that, in accordance with the product passport and technical documentation, a 152 mm VOG 27 shot should consist of a charge, a cartridge case, and a fuse, but according to the end user, these shots were delivered without a fuse.

Therefore, the Ministry of Defense is asking the company to deliver the fuses as soon as possible.

Under another contract, Morales’ company was supposed to supply 100 mm cumulative fragmentation plates for the MT-12, namely: 100 mm NEAT UBK2/8.

As a result, it turned out that half of the batch “has defects and according to external features corresponds to category II (complete markings are partially missing, some require minor repairs to eliminate defects, painted without preliminary removal of corrosion, pitting and minor corrosion of the projectile surface, paint sagging on the leading thickening of the projectile , partial lack of production data, etc.).”

The Ministry obtained from the company a revision of the price for the defective batch and a reduction of 50%, but as stated in the State Civil Aviation Administration act, it did not exercise the right to apply penalties. The estimated amount of penalties and interest under the contract as of February 2023 was $692.4 thousand.

This is not the only case where the company did not pay fines. In one of the cases, judging by the SASU report, this was caused by inattentively written terms of the contract in the English version.

When asked to comment on the article, interlocutors at the Ministry of Defense responded to Censor.NO that fleas can be caught everywhere. And that the company really helped a lot at the beginning of the war.

However, the author cannot agree with the “weapons at any cost” logic of the Ministry of Defense, because it often simply justifies the fact that companies are allowed to set a higher price and are not punished with fines. Until these stories begin to gain public resonance.