Mykolaiv Road Cleaning Contract Awarded Amid Controversy Over Bidder

The contract for road cleaning in Mykolaiv may be awarded without a competitive procedure to a company whose services are often used by local authorities. The bid of the participant was only 467 thousand less than the purchase amount.

This is evidenced by the data of the electronic public procurement system Prozorro.

A tender was announced in Mykolaiv to select a contractor for mechanized road cleaning. The expected purchase price was UAH 8 million 601 thousand 62. According to the terms of the tender, the winner has until December 31, 2025, to perform vacuum cleaning of the road surface from dirt, debris and sand with subsequent waste removal, as well as provide mechanized wet cleaning of the road.

Screenshot: Prozorro

The auction was scheduled for February 3, but only one company submitted its offer, which is likely to be awarded the contract.

According to the YouControl online analytical system, Kars Cleaning LLC was registered in 2011. The founder of the company is Oleksiy Kirilchuk, co-owner of Reklamnyi Mir LLC. In turn, the co-owner of the latter company was Anna Zamazeyeva, who was the head of the Mykolaiv Regional Council from 2020 to 2023.

By the way, the city authorities use the services of Kars Cleaning LLC quite often. Thus, the company has already earned almost UAH 400 million in public tenders. The company's main customers are Mykolaiv district administrations, departments, and utilities.

Screenshot: YouControl

Kars Cleaning has been featured in five journalistic investigations. One of them belongs to Intent.

It stated that Kars Cleaning LLC was nothing more than a reorganized Yuzhdorservice LLC, which had once been the subject of claims from law enforcement agencies. At the time, the prosecutor 's office found that representatives of the Central District Administration "unreasonably chose Yuzhdorservice LLC, which was not able to perform the road cleaning work stipulated in the tender documentation on its own." As law enforcement officers found out, these works were actually performed by another organization.

Also in February 2023, the administration of Zavodskyi district held a tender for mechanized vacuum and wet road cleaning services in the district. A contract worth UAH 7.2 million was signed with the only bidder, Kars Cleaning LLC. However, the Western Office of the State Audit Service in Zakarpattia Oblast found violations of the law in the preparation of the tender documents. As a result, the agreement between the Zavodsky District Administration and Kars Cleaning was terminated. However, due to the fact that almost six months had passed between the signing of the contract and its termination, the administration was forced to pay the contractor UAH 1.8 million.

Анна Бальчінос