Police investigate possible collusion of Kherson region village council officials with contractor

Law enforcement officers are investigating possible misappropriation of budget funds during the repair of basements in a kindergarten and lyceum in the Dariivka community in Kherson region. Both purchases worth more than UAH 22 million were made without using the electronic system, and the documents that were supposed to justify this were incomplete or missing.

This was reported by Anti-Corruption Dimension.

According to the court ruling, these are two procurements made by the Dariivka Village Council. The first one is the current repair of the basement of a kindergarten in the village of Dariivka with an expected cost of UAH 11.3 million. The second one is to repair the basement of the Mykilskyi Lyceum in Mykilske village with an expected cost of UAH 11.2 million. Both contracts were signed with Sotyi Dim Construction Firm LLC on the same day in July 2024.

Despite the significant amount of the contracts, the procurement was conducted without an electronic system. The procuring entity referred to the rules that allow procurement without bidding during martial law. However, the investigation noted that this rule is valid only under certain conditions: only customers located in the territories of active hostilities can conclude contracts without bidding. The village of Dariivka belongs to the territories of possible hostilities, which means that it is inappropriate to refer to this rule here.

Another reason for bypassing open bidding was the urgency of the work to build shelters. However, investigators found that the documents that were supposed to confirm the urgency were either missing or contained incomplete information. The customer did not provide any other documents that would confirm the impossibility of holding an open tender.

In addition, the investigators recorded discrepancies in the area of the basements, which affects the cost of the work. For example, during the inspection of the school, the basement area was 150 square meters, while in the documents as a shelter it was 794.2 square meters, and in the defective act and estimates - 790.56 square meters.

According to the investigation, such discrepancies could have led to an overestimation of the scope of work and, accordingly, the cost of repairs. Regarding the repair of another facility, no basement inspection report was published in the electronic procurement system at all.

At the same time, according to Most, the Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeal of the Kherson Regional Prosecutor's Office in the case of repairing a shelter in a kindergarten in the Dar'yivka community. In February of this year, the court of first instance upheld the prosecutor's office's claim, which demanded to suspend the contract between the Dar'yivka village council and the construction company Sotyi Dim, which had built the shelter in the kindergarten. This is one of the shelters that has been the subject of litigation between the regional prosecutor's office and the Dariivka village council for almost a year.

Also in Kherson, law enforcement officers are checking embezzlement during the construction of a kindergarten building. The money was transferred to the contractor for work that was never performed.

Анна Бальчінос