Big construction is not just about new roads! This is the billions of public funds that are used by selected companies. There are a few of them – only six. For the whole country. They divided the road market of Ukraine. These companies are suspected of conspiracy, and public activists investigating the means of large-scale construction have brought them into a separate caste – road cartels.
On October 6, the Court of Appeals ordered the Antimonopoly Committee to accept an application for the establishment of a cartel by Ukravtodor on the Big Construction. This is only the first battle won by experts, the war at the expense of Ukrainians has yet to begin.
Under Zelensky’s promise to build roads, the state began collecting money from everywhere: Gazprom’s fine won by Naftogaz, the Coronavirus Fund, International Monetary Fund loans, international loans, Ukreximbank fraud, and finally, as all this is missing, the government is slowly fading. In less than two years, 150 billion hryvnias have already been spent on the Great Construction program, the same amount that has never been spent on road repairs in the history of Ukraine.
Roads are really being built for such money, but then the questions begin.
First of all, under the sign of the President, the cost of building one kilometer suddenly increased 2.5-3 times. Secondly, Ukravtodor under the leadership of Oleksandr Kubrakov, who now heads the entire Ministry of Infrastructure, has decided not to play with competition and tenders. Formally, they were left, but confidently and persistently pushed out of the market of road construction of all players, except the big six: “Highway South”, “Onur”, “Highway”, “Rostdorstroy”, “Altcom” and “Techno-Bud-Center”. They take up to 70 percent of the whole big pie called “Big Construction”, all the others – just reject under any pretext right at the stage of competitions.
This is called a cartel, and cartel conspiracies are a serious crime that must be investigated and punished. Especially when it comes to budget funds.
Talking about the cartel at the “Great Construction” confidently began more than a year ago. But Ukravtodor not only did not react to it in any way, but openly lied and was rude in response to experts.
Since Ukravtodor, roughly speaking, did not even read the complaints of activists and experts, the GOshka Antitrust League decided to go to the Antimonopoly Committee, which is logical, because detecting conspiracies and cartels is their job, which we all pay for.
So for a year and a half, even the statements of experts were refused! To put it bluntly and personally – this was done by the head of the AMCU Olga Pishchanska. In particular, we found out that her sister Svitlana financed Volodymyr Zelensky’s election campaign. The Zelenskys even rewrote their villa in Italy for her when the former showman and leader of Quarter 95 decided to run for president. Well, Olga Pishanska herself is a close friend of the first lady.
And after the change of power, Olga Pishchanska suddenly became the head of the Antimonopoly Committee. The reasons for this, at first glance, strange decision became clear literally six months later: it was important for the President’s Office to cover its rear to cover up the atrocities, in particular, at the “Great Construction”. How else to explain the reluctance to even formally consider the statement of experts on the cartel on road construction?
To understand how much it cost each of us and why it is important. In each liter of fuel, which is refueled by cars driving on Ukrainian roads, UAH 5 of road construction costs are sewn up. 5 hryvnias in each liter. And this money, in addition to everything I mentioned at the beginning, UAH 150 billion is shared by 6 companies in less than two years.
Guess what the restriction of competition at such high rates leads to? That’s right, to abuse. For example, two recent news: Police are investigating Onur’s abuse during the construction of a bridge in Zaporizhia for UAH 12 billion, where the dismantling of temporary structures was entered in the budget, for which they paid several times in previous years; People’s Deputy Yuri Koryavchenkov, the same Yuzik from the Quarter, complained about the poor work of “hackneyed” on the Great Construction! Moreover, he cited specific facts, not a general blah blah blah.
Everyone who was even a little interested in the topic, including Yuzik, understands that cartels in the construction of roads are evil and it ends with the fact that roads are built expensively and badly, and Ms. Pishchanskaya is not. “Good,” they said in the Antitrust League and gathered a collective lawsuit from well-known activists and anyone interested. The money on the Big Construction is not spent out of the pocket of Zelensky or Pishchanska, but ours with you – as taxpayers! Therefore, we have the right to control what our money is spent on and to demand the investigation of suspicions of cartel conspiracies. The court of first instance dismissed the lawsuit, but on October 6, the first battle in this war was finally won: the Antimonopoly Committee was finally ordered to consider the Antitrust League’s statement and at least read their arguments about the existence of a cartel on the Great Construction.
This is a ticket to a long war: it is obvious that the AMCU is headed by friends The Zelensky family will simply not think so – there are distortions of facts ahead, master classes on blindness and misunderstanding of the obvious, new and new courts, manipulations of Ukravtodor, and so on. The main thing is that now all this can and will be evidence in court, and every action or inaction of the Antimonopoly Committee will become news and event. After all, that’s how publicity and public pressure work when officials don’t want to do their job.
