Odesa City Hall's favorite contractors fined for a million

The Antimonopoly Committee has exposed a collusion between three companies that are favorites of the Odesa City Council. The companies in question are Taurus, Spetsmontazh Bao, and Odeskomunekologiya.

According to the press service of the Southern Interregional Department of the AMCU, they coordinated their actions when participating in public tenders for the construction and reconstruction of facilities in the period from 2018 to 2021. The customers of these works were various structures of the Odesa City Council and Krasnosilsk Village Council, and the total expected value of the procurement reached more than UAH 220 million.

During the investigation, the antimonopoly authorities gathered evidence confirming that the companies acted in concert to create the appearance of competition and distort the bidding results. On May 6, 2025, the Antimonopoly Committee fined them more than UAH 1.1 million for these violations.

In addition, these companies may now be suspended from participating in public procurement, as the law prohibits those who have been caught colluding in the last three years from participating in tenders.

According to UouControl, Taurus was registered in 1992 and initially worked in the restaurant business. But in 2016, it changed its profile dramatically - after the change of co-founder, the company moved into construction. And it was from that time that its business took off: in 2018, the company began to regularly win multimillion-dollar budget contracts.

The police and the BES became interested in the company. In 2019, searches revealed that Taurus, Spetsmontazh Bao, Odeskomunekologiya, and a number of other companies were actually working under the same roof and conducting joint business activities, and that their managers and founders were related to each other. In 2020, the police obtained access to financial documents through the court. It was established that Taurus received UAH 8 million of budget funds for allegedly completed repairs that were not actually carried out.

In the same year, law enforcement officers suspected the company's director, Serhiy Zeleniuk, of overcharging for construction materials and misappropriating budget funds. According to the Bureau of Economic Security, Taurus evaded taxes worth more than UAH 82 million.

Ірина Глухова