Jan. 23, 2025, 1:56 p.m.
(Photo: Radio Liberty)
It was planned to build a base station worth almost 70 million hryvnias on Zmiinyi Island with public funds, but the prosecutor's office terminated the agreement.
According to the Odesa Regional Prosecutor's Office, this decision was made after an inspection revealed that the extension of the contracts was inappropriate to current conditions.
Thus, in 2020-2021, the State Enterprise "Marine Search and Rescue Service" held tenders and signed agreements with contractors to create a station that was supposed to ensure maritime safety and communication during emergencies. Funding was to come from the state budget.
However, due to Russia's full-scale invasion, Zmeinyi Island was included in the list of active combat zones, making it impossible to carry out the work. Despite this, the contracts were extended for 2023 and 2024, creating a risk of inefficient use of budget funds.
The prosecutor's office pointed out that state budget funds should be used for defense, infrastructure restoration, and assistance to IDPs, not for projects that cannot be implemented. After the prosecutor's office intervened, the contracts were terminated, and the state avoided any losses.
Earlier, journalists from the Center for Public Investigations investigated which tenders in Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson regions were announced and canceled precisely because they were inappropriate during the full-scale invasion.
In 2024, various budget organizations and institutions in Odesa and Mykolaiv regions announced more than 500 procurements for the repair of kindergartens, schools, administrative offices, hospitals, and residential buildings for a total of UAH 14 billion 374 million.
These included not only facilities that had been damaged by shelling, but also those whose repairs or reconstruction were going according to plan. About 100 tenders totaling UAH 775 million 574 thousand were involved in the reconstruction. However, the customer did not immediately select contractors for all the works. Some tenders had to be canceled due to a lack of bids, and sometimes due to a lack of money.
Ірина Глухова