The Verkhovna Rada adopted draft law No. 8381, which provides for the publishing within the Prozorro system of prices for goods and services purchased for the needs of the army (with the exception of weapons).
The development of the draft law took place with the expert support of the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC).
“At the moment, draft law No. 8381 is the only systematic step that was taken to solve the problem of inflated prices in the procurement of the Ministry of Defense. The latter, unfortunately, has not implemented any significant changes during the month since the scandal. At the same time, the next important stage in this story should be the delegation of procurement functions from the Ministry of Defense to professional purchasers,” Olena Shcherban, deputy executive director of the AntAC
The draft law provides for the following terms for the publication of information about the procurement of the Ministry of Defense (since the date of entry into force):
- within 30 days – a module must be created in Prozorro, which will allow publishing information for a unit of goods, as well as there should be developed by-laws of the Cabinet of Ministers, necessary for the implementation of the law;
- within 60 days after the creation of the module in Prozorro – data on prices per product unit from contracts concluded starting from February 24, 2022 and classified before that should be published;
- within 10 days from the moment of conclusion of the contract – information about new purchases from or changed contracts will be published.
The draft law was developed after the scandal that arose due to the publication of Yuri Nikolov’s article on the prices of food for the military, which were inflated by 2-3 times. In particular, the prices for eggs and the published contract of the Ministry of Defense reached UAH 17/piece, as opposed to UAH 7 in Kyiv supermarkets, for potatoes – UAH 22/kg, as opposed to the usual UAH 9/kg.
At the same time, the total amount of the contract is UAH 13 billion, which is twice as much as the funds collected by the Come Back Alive Fund last year.
Although the Minister of Defense announced that the corresponding interpretation of the prices was erroneous, data collected later confirmed that price inflation of military food purchases became a common practice during the war.
The AntAC will provide thorough monitoring of the implementation of the law and will ensure that the funds for the needs of the Ukrainian military are spent as intended, and are not going into the pockets of corrupt officials.