After the full-scale invasion, the scheme of corrupt earnings in Ukraine underwent a certain transformation. The asphalt margin of “Big Construction” has ceased to be converted into “black” salaries of pro-government functionaries, because large-scale road repairs have stopped, and those that remain are scanty compared to pre-war times.
The scandal with eggs for 17 UAH prevented the installation of a feeder at the UNARMED procurement of the Ministry of Defense. And constant attention to civil engineering with its alchemical estimates led to the appearance of bill No. 11057 on the obligation to publish prices of building materials in Prozorro.
However, the authorities, accustomed to luxury, on the one hand, preserved the old ones, and on the other, found new niches for shadow earnings:
- customs benefits and tax “nuances” (“eternal classics” with modifications for new flows);
- law enforcement racketeering (bloomed under the pretext of “Nuvizhepanimae, we need money for secret operations against the Russians, which we cannot officially finance from the state budget”);
- gambling (which flourished, among other things, due to the spread of gambling addiction among the military and thanks to the long-term dizziness of the National Bank and other financial controllers, who “did not see” the huge flows of money flowing through payment systems);
- tobacco (Ukraine was filled with trays of cigarettes without excise tax and telegram channels with them, and the security forces were not even interested in looking at it);
- weapons (purchases of domestic drones were immediately put into the “shadow” outside of Prozorro, control over pricing was left to the mercy of fate, and imports were and are opaque for everyone except the “security officers”);
- opaque construction, because you know - if you want to steal, start building.
By and large, in Ukraine there are such types of construction for public money.
Road shadow. It is being conducted according to the rules that Alexander Kubrakov introduced during the “Great Construction” of Golik-Zelensky. This is when the estimated prices of building materials are hidden along with the estimates themselves, and everyone out there is left with just the figure “how much it costs to asphalt a square meter of road.” In a cartel environment, this is an ideal way to inflate prices.
Because no one will see what you put in the price per square meter, and competitors will not bring down the prices. During the year-long management of Mustafa Nayem’s team in State Reconstruction, no changes were made to this order. Therefore, this potentially remains an interesting niche for making money when money becomes available in road construction. But now they are definitely gone; even the Road Fund itself, which collected money for asphalting, has already been liquidated.
Civil transparent. At the same time, Nayem’s team put a lot of effort into squeezing out excess margins from contracts for the restoration of damaged housing and other social infrastructure. First of all, this was done through the mandatory publication of estimate documentation at all stages. Now that the customer publishes estimates, Our Money spends more and more time and energy searching for inflated prices.
Yes, we still continue to find them, and even in projects financed with money from the UN and the European Investment Bank, not to mention projects financed from the Ukrainian budget. Even at Okhmatdyt they planned to arrange a sawing using the money of benefactors. However, finding such pearls is becoming increasingly difficult.
Opaque civil engineering. Of course, many did not perceive this trend as a new modus vivendi and, on the contrary, began to hide their estimates. For example, the Veterans Hospital in Kyiv last year published estimates for its renovation for a billion hryvnia, with prices for building materials inflated by 2-4 times, but this year they simply did not fill out the columns with prices.
Some do it defiantly, while others try to save face. For example, the Zaporozhye regional administration refused to provide journalists and a people’s deputy with estimates for the construction of school shelters worth half a billion hryvnia due to... a power outage. Like, we can’t turn on the printer to print several tables.
Another “life hack” is to hide the names of building materials in the estimate. For example, they prescribe some kind of glue for millions of hryvnias without a brand name or manufacturer. That's it, it is impossible to establish the adequacy of the price without an on-site examination. This is how they did it in the estimate for the renovation of a hospital in Krivoy Rog worth UAH 1.3 billion, which was just given to Yuriy Golik’s protégé company from the Bigus.info investigation.
Military construction outside of Prozorro. For obvious reasons, the details of military construction, such as addresses, design decisions, performers, must remain secret. But none of these circumstances should be an obstacle to publishing prices for building materials.
Nothing will fall to the enemy if the customer reports the price per ton of reinforcement or meter of fidget without indicating the number of these units and the addresses of these objects. This is an exclusively trade secret, in which it is so convenient for “eggs 17” to germinate. Or wooden logs cost 11 thousand UAH per cubic meter, which is three times more expensive than the market, as it turned out to be in the fortification projects of the Mykolaiv regional administration.
Vitaly Kim's subordinates, in response to a parliamentary request, provided data on the prices of their building materials, which turned out to be so extravagant that, according to the Anti-Corruption Center, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau even began criminal proceedings (No. 42024000050000025) under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code for embezzlement budget funds in particular large size.
We hope that the investigation will not take into account Kim’s strange explanations about inflated prices - he simply faked the “Our Pennies” page in Photoshop to show what our article should have looked like, in his opinion. This is not a joke. This is a photographic fact. Here Kim himself circled in red on his screen what his designers had Photoshopped into the article:
Energy construction outside of Prozorro. It began after the Russians began to attack our energy sector in 2022. The main direction of spending funds is the construction of anti-mine protection over electrical facilities carried out by Ukrenergo, State Restoration and Ukrhydroenergo. Here, with government permission, everything is opaque due to the military overtones of the construction. Which is what we took advantage of.
For example, Ukrhydroenergo closed all data on a 4 billion contract with a company whose main achievement was previously the renovation of schools in the Zhytomyr region.
State restoration and Ukrenergo at different times showed the prices of building materials for coverings. However, the closed nature of the projects themselves left a lot of room for speculation and attention of investigators. There is no data yet on the comparative examination of projects with the scope of work. “Our Pennies” cannot conduct such an examination, since the projects themselves are “classified” for mere mortals.
So while construction remains a possible path to unearned billions, making a margin there is becoming increasingly dangerous. Therefore, a new story performed by Energoatom at a cost of $5 billion is rushing to the rescue.
“Big earners” have high hopes for the project to complete the construction of two power units at the Khmelnytsky Nuclear Power Plant. Their construction began during the Soviet Union, but then, in the 80s, they were abandoned. Forty years of rain, snow, weathering and corrosion seemed to leave the long-term construction blocks no chance. But no, the project has resurrected and is closer to completion than ever, because it ideally suits all the tasks of the president’s office.
This is the immediate launch of the “Big Concreting”. Of course, those blocks will take ten years to build, if not more. But all this time the concrete will be poured, the certificates of completed work will be paid for, and the margin will drip into the pockets. We are talking about tens of billions of hryvnia in the coming years. They will not go towards fortifications in the east or energy equipment, which is needed now for this winter and for distributed generation. They will be spent on something that may work someday in the future, or maybe never.
What is very important is that this will be an opaque story. Already now, all construction of facilities related to reconstruction after Russian shelling is closed by all levels of protection of government regulations. Therefore, the construction of such a strategic facility as a nuclear power plant will also inevitably be closed. This means no public or expert control.
The excitement is fueled by the surprisingly loyal attitude of American partners to Bankova's nuclear projects. US Ambassador Bridget Brink took part in pouring the first cubic meter of concrete into block No. 5 of the KhNPP. Now the former US Special Representative for the Economic Recovery of Ukraine, Penny Pritzker, emphasized that “to quickly solve the problem, building up nuclear energy is an absolutely rational solution.”
The reasons for this loyalty are quite natural and mercantile. The Americans expect that Ukraine will install reactors purchased from the Americans at the new units and will purchase American fuel. Consequently, the pressure from the State Department on the relevant Minister German Galushchenko is minimal.
This made it possible for Galushchenko and his team to already launch preparatory processes for large-scale construction.
A bunch of tenders for the Khmelnytsky NPP are now being demonstratively passed through the Prozorro system. They buy dozens of canteen trailers, dressing rooms and meeting rooms for builders, and protective equipment for welders and assemblers. Moreover, at million-dollar tenders, everything is bought at normal prices, so as not to prematurely attract attention to future billion-dollar purchases.
They have also already begun to design an apartment building for builders in Netishyn, next to the Khmelnitsky NPP. We even ordered our own concrete mixing plant, so as not to give a penny to the left for the main building materials. And all this is already worth tens of millions of hryvnia.
However, fortunately for all of us, there is one problem. To launch the “Big Nuclear Construction”, a law must be passed. Galushchenko already tried to do this in June, but carried out the promotional campaign so poorly that even the “servants of the people” did not vote for this project. Accordingly, the construction of nuclear units costing hundreds of billions risks never starting.
Bankova is definitely not expecting this. So either Galushchenko will bring the law to completion in the fall, finding the necessary sums of arguments to motivate unmotivated people’s deputies. Or his work will be done by another minister. Or Vladimir Zelensky himself, who sometimes goes to parliament, will have to get down to business. Under extreme circumstances.
We are confident that proven servants, Minister G. Galushchenko and head of Energoatom P. Kotin, will prove their usefulness for the common cause this time too. They have been caught a hundred times for inflating the prices of building materials, but they get away with it like water off a duck's back. Because people are needed. For example, last year Energoatom decided to build a production facility in Yuzhnoukrainsk for UAH 89 million.
After “Our Money” saw concrete and reinforcement in the estimate at twice the price and this fact became the subject of consideration by the temporary investigative commission of the Verkhovna Rada, that tender was demolished and a new one was held instead, with very good savings, for only 71 million UAH .
No one suffered any punishment for that and a bunch of other cuts. This allowed Galushchenko and Kotin to increase the degree of arrogance and irresponsibility.
It is an open secret that it is Energoatom’s transformers that are now the most vulnerable to shock. Anti-suicide protection of critical substations of Ukrenergo, together with State Restoration contractors, is already being completed and before the heating season they can close all the most necessary things, at least from suicide bombers. But the points through which energy leaves nuclear power plants are under the exclusive control of Energoatom itself. They are even physically separated by a fence from the rest of Ukraine. So, no one even remembered about the concrete protection of “nuclear” transformers.
Not at Energoatom, not at the Ministry of Energy, not at the Office of the President. Not before...
