Without an auction: Odesa chose a breadwinner for students in Khadzhybey district for 46 million

The Center for Financing and Economic Activities and Institutions of the Education System of Khadzhybeyskyi District of Odesa has conducted a procurement to select a company that will supply food for schoolchildren.

This is reported in the Prozorro electronic procurement system.

The procurement was held in the format of an open tender with special conditions on January 7, and the only participant was the private enterprise Ration Group. According to the YouControl service, the owner and director of the private enterprise Ration Group is Maksym Yatsenko.

The procurement was conducted in the format of an open tender with special conditions. Open bidding with special features means that almost all terms are shorter than in open bidding in accordance with the Law on Public Procurement. This means that this procurement is much faster than open tenders.

The period for submitting proposals is seven calendar days, and the period for challenging qualifications is five calendar days. Often, there is no auction during such tenders, so the participant has no competitors.

However, the year before last, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine temporarily changed the rules of bidding for the period of martial law in Ukraine and within 90 days from the date of its termination or cancellation. The government temporarily canceled electronic auctions. Since then, tenders announced in Prozorro can be held without an auction.

At the end of 2024, the Centers for Financing and Economic Activity and Educational Institutions of four Odesa districts held tenders to select companies that would supply meals for schoolchildren. In particular, Prymorskyi and Peresypskyi districts chose Fabrika Smaku LLC, while Kyivskyi and Khadzhybeyskyi districts chose Ration Group, a private enterprise.

According to the YouControl service, Fabrika Smaku LLC was registered in 2015. The owners are Ihor Levinzon and Olha Boholyubova, and the owner and director of the private enterprise Ration Group is Maksym Yatsenko.

In September 2022, the Center for Public Investigations analyzed the composition of companies participating in tenders for the right to feed Odesa schoolchildren and identified the main players in this market in Odesa. The experts identified Fabrika Smaku LLC as one of the leaders.

Instead, Ratsiy Group PE was included in the second group of caterers, which received fewer tenders than Fabryka Smaku LLC and other leaders.

The journalists emphasized that Ration Group and Proviant Service were the successors of Odesa-based Olympia Service, owned by Maksym Yatsenko and Tetiana Tarasiuk. Before them, Olympia Service belonged to Svitlana Spivak, the mother of politician Dmytro Spivak.

Кирило Бойко