Kherson Regional Children’s Hospital has terminated the contract with the contractor who was to reconstruct the facility’s reception department. This decision was made after violations were discovered during procurement monitoring conducted by the State Audit Service.
This concerns a procurement that took place last summer, after which the hospital signed a contract worth UAH 102.6 million with LLC “Avtomagistral-Zakhid”. At that time MOST journalists found in the company’s estimate equipment at inflated prices and numerous items that had only general descriptions.
As indicated on Prozorro, after the contract was signed auditors determined that during the tender the hospital allowed a number of violations of public procurement legislation.
In particular, auditors found that the estimate documentation of LLC “Avtomagistral-Zakhid” listed materials and equipment originating from countries that are not included in the list of “acceptable” ones according to the Framework Agreement between Ukraine and the EU under the Ukraine Facility instrument. These are China, Turkey, India, Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
Under the tender documentation, all goods and materials were required to be produced in states designated as acceptable for the use of EU funds. Despite this, the contracting authority did not reject the company’s proposal.
In addition, a number of other violations were recorded.
As a result of the monitoring the hospital was required to remedy the violations, so, to avoid risks, on September 10 the contract with the contractor was terminated.
And already on October 8 a new procurement was published on Prozorro for the reconstruction of the reception department of the children’s regional hospital.
This time the hospital signed a contract with the consortium “Magistral Plus”.
According to the business analytics system YouControl, “Magistral Plus” was established in June this year. The company’s founders are listed as LLC “Avtomagistral-Zakhid”, the same one that first received the contract to repair this hospital, and LLC “Construction Company VALK”. The ultimate beneficiary is Serhiy Yuzvyshin.
In the new estimate the vast majority of equipment and materials are of Ukrainian manufacture; there are also items with equipment produced in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Italy, the Netherlands and France. We did not encounter any “unacceptable” producing countries in the estimate.
The publication was created within the project of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) “Strengthening Public Oversight” with financial support from Norway.