The “big construction” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is one of the corruption schemes in the history of Ukraine, moreover, it threatens with a surge in inflation in Ukraine. See the Watchdogs investigation for what’s going on at Big Construction.
Ukrainian roads are one of the most expensive in Europe. The customer of road repairs and construction is Ukravtodor. Until last week, his flag, Alexander Kubrakov, is now the acting Minister of Transport. (He received a promotion – according to the President himself – for a real result in “Big Construction”)
During the tenure of Kubrakov, the state agency “Ukravtodor” turned into a klondike for the development of budget money – last year an astronomical 110 billion hryvnia was spent on the roads of the Big Construction program.
The scheme that Mr. Kubrakov and the company skated on road contracts is as old as the world. Look, from 100% of the cost of road construction – 80% is the cost of building materials: asphalt, crushed stone, sand. And only 20% is the company’s profit, salaries of workers and working mechanisms – excavators, trucks, asphalt pavers, etc. The easiest way to steal is to overcharge construction materials. you buy crushed stone for two hundred hryvnias, and in the documents you draw five hundred. Three hundred remains for you and all your accomplices.
According to Our Money, Kubrakov managed to put the cost of the “gratitude” for the fat tender directly into the project documentation! Overpricing for building materials was incorporated directly into the projects and amounted to 15-20%. That is, every fifth hryvnia came in as a “gratitude” even before the construction!
Not to be unfounded, here is a specific example: the Poltava road R-60. This is the route of regional values Konotop-Romny-Pyriatyn, to be done in 34 km sections during this year for 522 million hryvnias. And when the tender was won by the Altcom company for 455 million, as well as the savings turned out to be quite good, Ukravtodor finally revealed this great secret – “estimates”. Here’s what they had.
“The overstatement of the price of asphalt reached almost 40% of the level that even Ukravtodor itself recognizes as a market for that region. Withdrawing the margin on building materials is the easiest way to get illegal income, ”said Yuriyolov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Our Money website.
These comparative tables: the cost of crushed stone increased by 64%, asphalt – by 27 and 17%, depending on the grade. Paradoxically, the authors of this project even overestimated the prices recommended and recognized as market prices for the Poltava region by the specialized department of Ukravtodor. The difference between the cost of the same crushed stone from the first to the last link just increased by 60%. Every fifth hryvnia went to someone’s pocket.
“We are entering the era of cartel schemes, when all of a sudden construction becomes twice as expensive within one calendar year, the key raw material component – bitumen – was cheaper in 2020 than in 2019 or 2018,” says ex-minister of infrastructure Vladimir Omelyan.
There was and is in the “Ukravtodor” of the times of Kubrakov one more tender favorite – the notorious “Avtomagistral-Yug”. Just imagine – since the beginning of 2020, this company has won tenders for a total of more than 50 billion hryvnia.
Let us now realize in the deals of this company with state money, where corruption is protected. It was we who managed, six months ago, to discern in the accounting department of Avtomagistral the transformation of prices for building materials, in fact – a division of budget funds. Moreover, this was done with a special dose of cynicism. Look.
Avtomagistral-Yug repaired the Dnieper-Tsarichanka-Kobelyaki-Reshetilovka highway. Almost 3 billion hryvnias were allocated for this repair from the covid fund. This is in the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers as amended from September 2020.
On this road, they also used the “latest technologies” from Zelensky’s father-in-law using slag waste, took away the guarantor Arcelor-Mittal from the already beloved company for free, and the Motorway bought this slag of specific OOOVok almost at the price of gold and rolled it into the road.
One of these one-day OOOVok was a certain firm “Medan”. Its director, Denis Lobodin from the city of Chornomorsk, turned out to be an employee of the same “Avtomagistrala”, which he did not fail to boast about on his FB page. We have obtained exclusive data with the help of this OOOwka. And imagine our shock, when the price of slag on the way from Arcelor through a number of firms and in Avtomagistral was changing from zero to 90 hryvnia before our very eyes. On the scale of Big Construction, this is millions of budget air hryvnias.
Not only slag, but the prices for goods that the highway bought from Medan were on average 40% higher than those that Medan bought the same goods from other companies. For example, a pressed curb (1000 * 200 * 80 mm) bought 1,500 units from the company “pledge” at 62.5 hryvnias apiece, and after 2 days “Avtomagistra” was sold for 111 hryvnias. So the roads are getting more expensive!
After an investigation by the Watchdogs, Medan was attached to criminal paragraph.
The “big construction” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is one of the corruption schemes in the history of Ukraine, moreover, it threatens with a surge in inflation in Ukraine. See the Watchdogs investigation for what’s going on at Big Construction.
Ukrainian roads are one of the most expensive in Europe. The customer of road repairs and construction is Ukravtodor. Until last week, his flag, Alexander Kubrakov, is now the acting Minister of Transport. (He received a promotion – according to the President himself – for a real result in “Big Construction”)
During the tenure of Kubrakov, the state agency “Ukravtodor” turned into a klondike for the development of budget money – last year an astronomical 110 billion hryvnia was spent on the roads of the Big Construction program.
The scheme that Mr. Kubrakov and the company skated on road contracts is as old as the world. Look, from 100% of the cost of road construction – 80% is the cost of building materials: asphalt, crushed stone, sand. And only 20% is the company’s profit, salaries of workers and working mechanisms – excavators, trucks, asphalt pavers, etc. The easiest way to steal is to overcharge construction materials. you buy crushed stone for two hundred hryvnias, and in the documents you draw five hundred. Three hundred remains for you and all your accomplices.
According to Our Money, Kubrakov managed to put the cost of the “gratitude” for the fat tender directly into the project documentation! Overpricing for building materials was incorporated directly into the projects and amounted to 15-20%. That is, every fifth hryvnia came in as a “gratitude” even before the construction!
Not to be unfounded, here is a specific example: the Poltava road R-60. This is the route of regional values Konotop-Romny-Pyriatyn, to be done in 34 km sections during this year for 522 million hryvnias. And when the tender was won by the Altcom company for 455 million, as well as the savings turned out to be quite good, Ukravtodor finally revealed this great secret – “estimates”. Here’s what they had.
“The overstatement of the price of asphalt reached almost 40% of the level that even Ukravtodor itself recognizes as a market for that region. Withdrawing the margin on building materials is the easiest way to get illegal income, ”said Yuriyolov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Our Money website.
These comparative tables: the cost of crushed stone increased by 64%, asphalt – by 27 and 17%, depending on the grade. Paradoxically, the authors of this project even overestimated the prices recommended and recognized as market prices for the Poltava region by the specialized department of Ukravtodor. The difference between the cost of the same crushed stone from the first to the last link just increased by 60%. Every fifth hryvnia went to someone’s pocket.
“We are entering the era of cartel schemes, when all of a sudden construction becomes twice as expensive within one calendar year, the key raw material component – bitumen – was cheaper in 2020 than in 2019 or 2018,” says ex-minister of infrastructure Vladimir Omelyan.
There was and is in the “Ukravtodor” of the times of Kubrakov one more tender favorite – the notorious “Avtomagistral-Yug”. Just imagine – since the beginning of 2020, this company has won tenders for a total of more than 50 billion hryvnia.
Let us now realize in the deals of this company with state money, where corruption is protected. It was we who managed, six months ago, to discern in the accounting department of Avtomagistral the transformation of prices for building materials, in fact – a division of budget funds. Moreover, this was done with a special dose of cynicism. Look.
Avtomagistral-Yug repaired the Dnieper-Tsarichanka-Kobelyaki-Reshetilovka highway. Almost 3 billion hryvnias were allocated for this repair from the covid fund. This is in the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers as amended from September 2020.
On this road, they also used the “latest technologies” from Zelensky’s father-in-law using slag waste, took away the guarantor Arcelor-Mittal from the already beloved company for free, and the Motorway bought this slag of specific OOOVok almost at the price of gold and rolled it into the road.
One of these one-day OOOVok was a certain firm “Medan”. Its director, Denis Lobodin from the city of Chornomorsk, turned out to be an employee of the same “Avtomagistrala”, which he did not fail to boast about on his FB page. We have obtained exclusive data with the help of this OOOwka. And imagine our shock, when the price of slag on the way from Arcelor through a number of firms and in Avtomagistral was changing from zero to 90 hryvnia before our very eyes. On the scale of Big Construction, this is millions of budget air hryvnias.
Not only slag, but the prices for goods that the highway bought from Medan were on average 40% higher than those that Medan bought the same goods from other companies. For example, a pressed curb (1000 * 200 * 80 mm) bought 1,500 units from the company “pledge” at 62.5 hryvnias apiece, and after 2 days “Avtomagistra” was sold for 111 hryvnias. So the roads are getting more expensive!
After an investigation by the Watchdogs, Medan was attached to criminal paragraph.
