Law enforcement agencies are conducting a large-scale investigation into possible abuses during state procurement of medicines and medical devices for the capital’s medical institutions.
This is reported by Kyiv24
Suspicion of Price Inflation and Supplier Lobbying
According to the police, several officials from the Department of Health of the Kyiv City State Administration, previously headed by Valentyna Hinzburg, may be involved in organizing schemes to inflate prices for medical products supplied to Kyiv hospitals with budget funds. According to the investigation, the prices of goods were artificially increased by 3-5 times through lobbying specific suppliers.
Additionally, investigators believe that an advisor to the former first deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration, Mykola Povoroznyk, was one of the key figures in these schemes. He allegedly organized cooperation with supplier companies, formulated technical specifications, and set bidding conditions in such a way that other participants could not win the tenders.
Role of the Working Group and Scale of Procurement
According to the investigation materials, a special working group was established in 2024 within the department to process requests from hospitals regarding their needs for medications, equipment, and products. It was expected that this group would approve the technical requirements that effectively confirmed the victory of certain companies in tenders.
“Investigators have information that this advisor received ready-made technical specifications from representatives of these business entities and then provided electronic files with these documents to the same deputy director of the Department of Health – for, we quote, ‘achieving further approval of such technical requirements for procurement items by the working group at the department. According to the investigation, this working group was created in 2024 and is engaged in processing requests from hospitals regarding their needs for various medications, products, and equipment. In turn, the deputy head of the ‘medical’ department of the city administration, as law enforcement agencies believe, ensured ‘unimpeded voting by the working group for the adoption and publication of the provided medical-technical requirements and technical specifications, which subsequently ensures the sole victory of business entities in procurements,'” writes “KV”.
As of today, the investigation has not yet completed the assessment of potential losses to the city budget; however, it is known that the annual procurement volumes for the capital’s hospitals exceed two billion hryvnias. The investigation continues, and law enforcement agencies promise to establish all circumstances and individuals involved in organizing the corruption schemes.