Officials of the Darnitsa pharmaceutical company allegedly submitted forged documents to the Economic Court of Kyiv, which contained information about prices for the purchase of raw materials from foreign suppliers
Against the background of the war, incomes of the population are falling, the number of sick and wounded is growing, and prices for medicines are skyrocketing. The reason is both the rise in price of pharmaceutical raw materials purchased abroad and the own interests of the largest players in the industry. So who actually inflates the cost of medicines and what does the long-term legal battle between the capital's Darnitsa and BHFZ have to do with it?
But how does the influential law firm Aekvo, headed by Alexey Filatov, a native of the Poroshenko Administration, help PJSC FF Darnitsa gain leadership? StopCora journalist Diana Lovskaya investigated.
The capital's pharmaceutical company Darnitsa is confidently gaining a leadership position in the industry. To do this, a powerful drug manufacturer uses a fairly tough strategy, absorbing competitors or trying to influence them through the courts.
We are talking, in particular, about the long-term legal dispute between Darnitsa and the Borshchagovsky Chemical and Pharmaceutical Plant.
This case is being considered by the Economic Court of Kyiv, chaired by Judge Tatyana Vasilchenko. The subject of consideration is the demands of the pharmaceutical company "Darnitsa", which by the way has a 30% stake in BHFZ, to current and former officials of the same BHFZ regarding losses in the amount of more than 190 million UAH.
In this case, Darnitsa even secured the support of the London court.
On May 28, the High Court of Justice in London confirmed the arrest of the accounts of the British company Metabay, which belongs to the director of business development of the Borshchagovsky Chemical and Pharmaceutical Plant (BHFZ) Irina Rzhepetskaya, the daughter of the chairman of the Supervisory Board of the BHFZ Nikolai Bespalko and the general director of B1F8 and the general director of BHFZ.
Opponents of Darnitsa suggest that the pharmaceutical giant is probably being helped by various legal maneuvers by experienced lawyers to prolong the trial.
The Darnitsa case is being handled by the Aekvo law firm. The founder of this legal association is the former deputy head of the Presidential Administration during the Poroshenko era, Alexey Filatov. It is he who is called the “father” of unsuccessful judicial reform in Ukraine.
In addition, in legal circles they say that Filatov retained great influence both on the judicial system as a whole and on individual judges. Even at the highest level.
“Alexei Filatov, who is responsible for judicial reform in the Presidential Administration, puts pressure not only on the Kyiv Court of Appeal, but also on other judicial institutions, including the Supreme Administrative and Supreme Economic Courts of Ukraine. My clients have repeatedly encountered facts of Filatov’s pressure on the courts in order to obtain one or another decision in favor of one of the parties,” said Dmitry Loshakov, managing partner of the Capital law firm.
Loshakov recalled that when the case of the Latvian company Reverta against a Ukrainian citizen regarding ownership rights to commercial real estate was considered in the Supreme Economic Court, lawyers received signals that Filatov seemed to be personally monitoring the process and giving instructions to the judges through the then chairman of the Supreme Economic Court Bogdan Lvov.
It should also be noted that Filatov himself also came into the focus of attention of law enforcement and anti-corruption officials. NABU detectives once conducted a pre-trial investigation into criminal proceedings into the possible illegal enrichment of the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration.
But let’s return to the essence of the dispute between Darnitsa and BHFO.
Darnitsa's claims are that, at least since 2014, the BHFO has allegedly purchased pharmaceutical raw materials from the German company Farmaplant at a price significantly higher than the market price. We are talking about an API - an active pharmaceutical ingredient, that is, a mixture of substances used to make a drug.
However, during the trial, representatives of the defendant officials of the Borshchagovsky Chemical and Pharmaceutical Plant presented their evidence to the court. And they showed that the prices provided by Darnitsa actually exceed the import prices of the BHFO in some cases by 14%, and in others by 300%.
Another argument of Darnitsa representatives was information about the cost of the studied APIs from the European market.
They provided the court with the following documents:
1. A copy of the notarized translation of VA INTERTRADING.
2. A copy of the notarized translation of the VEZ FARMACHEM letter.
3. A copy of the notarized translation of the letter from the European supplier.
As it turned out in court, the specified European companies - VA Intertrading and VEZ Farmachem - are one of the API suppliers for the Kievmedpreparat Joint Stock Company. This circumstance made it possible to verify the veracity of information from letters from VA Intertrading and VEZ Farmachem.
So, the evidence of the Darnitsa pharmaceutical company raised doubts about its reliability, so information about a criminal offense was entered into the ERDR.
Production materials, in particular, contain API customs clearance documents imported for JSC Kievmedpreparat. The suppliers were the above-mentioned VA Intertrading and VEZ Farmachem.
As stated in the plot of the case, unidentified officials of PJSC FF Darnitsa probably submitted forged documents to the Economic Court of the city of Kyiv, which contain information on prices for the purchase of raw materials from companies that differ from those at the disposal of the State Customs Service of Ukraine.
So what will the final decision be made by Judge Vasilchenko? And will Aekvo’s lawyers be able to avoid criminal liability? For now, these questions remain open, and we continue to monitor the process.
Let us remind you that this year medications under the brand of the capital’s Darnitsa company of ex-People’s Deputy Gleb Zagoriy were recorded for sale on one of the Russian websites. Representatives of the manufacturer assure that they have abandoned foreign economic relations with the aggressor country since 2014. However, a number of signs indicate that the batch of products in question is quite fresh.
