"Servant of People" send almost UAH 200 million of state funds to company that existed only for month - "Slidstvo.info". INFOGRAPHICS
The Servant of the People party has signed a contract for almost UAH 200 million in state funding for four years with Profmarket Service. However, the company had no previous commercial experience, as it was established only on December 19, 2019, a month before signing the contract with the party. At the beginning of March 2024 (a few weeks before the deadline for submitting financial reports by parliamentary parties), the contract expired, and the company was immediately liquidated.
Journalists of Slidstvo.info found out who owned and what the company that received millions of state funds from the Servant of the People party was engaged in, Censor.NET reports.
What is known about the company that provided staffing services to the Servant of the People
The practice of outstaffing is quite common in Ukraine - managers, lawyers and consultants are hired in this way.
The financial reports of the Servant of the People repeatedly mention Profmarket Service - the party paid the company for staffing services. A week before the termination of Profmarket Service's activities, a vacancy for an office manager to work for the company at the address: Kyiv, Parkova Road, was posted online. The central office of the Servant of the People party is located on this street.
However, there is almost no information about Profmarket Service in the public domain and no website. More than ten organizations are registered at its address in the center of Kyiv.
Profmarket Service's liquidation commission is headed by Valentyna Makarova, who was Сhief Фccountant at Servant of the People until the end of March 2024.
Speaking to the journalist, Valentyna Makarova confirmed that the party was the company's only client. "This was determined by history," she said when asked why it happened. According to her, the "servants" no longer work with Profmarket Service, as the contract expired at the end of this year. Makarova also worked for the company, although her cooperation with Servant of the People ended later than Profmarket Service ceased operations.
This business was profitable - Profmarket Service received from Servant of the People from UAH 20 million to almost UAH 80 million annually. All of this was due to a single contract signed on 21 January 2020. However, the company had no previous commercial experience, as it was established only on 19 December 2019, a month before the contract with the party was signed.
Thus, a contract for almost UAH 200 million in state funding was signed for four years with a company that had existed for only a month. As soon as the contract expired, Profmarket Service was liquidated.
Salaries of SP deputies
Several local deputies from the Servant of the People party were listed as employees of Profmarket Service.
Among them is Arina Pustova, a member of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council and former PR specialist of the company. In a commentary to the journalist, Pustova said that she has not been working with Profmarket Service since 2021.
"We were employed by Profmarket Service LLC, but we worked in the office, i.e. in the party," Pustova explained.
Viktoriia Alieksieichuk, deputy head of the legal department of Profmarket Service and head of the Servant of the People faction in the Kharkiv City Council, also worked for the company until the spring of 2023. According to her, she worked remotely and did not know for whom she was doing the work: "I was drafting legal documentation to comply with current legislation and so on. Where was it then applied? I can't say, I don't know."
Alieksieichuk also could not remember what came first - working at Profmarket Service or running for the Servant of the People party in Kharkiv.
According to Oleksandr Korniienko, who headed the Servant of the People at the time, this company employed people who provided services to the party's central office in Kyiv or remotely (due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
In the monthly reports of the Servant of the People, you can find separate payments intended for the salaries of several dozen other employees.
Kornienko explained to the journalist that this was the way employees of regional organisations were paid: "People who were in the regional organisations were paid from the party's account, they were directly there. Companies such as Profmarket Service make very large markups, because they are contractually obliged to provide many additional things, such as a workplace. If we are talking about 37 organisations across Ukraine, (...) it would be very unprofitable to outstaff."
At the same time, the declarations of the people employed by Profmarket Service show that they were geographically distributed throughout the country. In addition to the already mentioned deputies of the Kharkiv City Council and the Dnipro Regional Council, the company also employed representatives of the Servant of the People party from Kryvyi Rih.
In particular, Oleksandr Lyshyn, a deputy of the Kryvyi Rih District Council, and Anastasiia Chornous, a deputy of the Pokrovskyi District Council in Kryvyi Rih, received income through this company. Yana Kazarina, the head of Ze!Molodizhka in the city and the administrator of Profmarket Service, also ran for the city council.
Among the declarants, Antonina Fedosova, a member of the Boryspil District Council and Kornienko's pro bono assistant, received the highest salary in the company - in 2020, it was just over UAH 200,000 per year. Others received smaller amounts, mostly up to UAH 100,000 per year.
According to Profmarket Service's tax reports, the company had the most employees in 2021 - 76 people. It received UAH 76 million from the Servant of the People party. Even if we assume that all of them received the same amount of money as Fedosova, the total amount is not even close to a third of what the company received.
However, in the same year, the company declared only UAH 4 million in profit after all expenses. Profmarket Service's tax returns also raise questions. For example, in 2021, the company reported UAH 63 million in revenue, although it received more from its "servants". The situation was similar in 2020 - the difference was about UAH 7 million, and in 2022 - several million more.
According to Makarova, the head of the liquidation commission of Profmarket Service, this is because the amount of income does not include advance payments. However, until 2023, the party paid the company on a monthly basis. For example, in December 2022, Servant of the People paid for services at the end of the month - on 29 December. It was only in 2023 that some payments for several months at once were indicated as prepayments.
Who did receive the profits?
Oksana Nadraga has been the owner of Profmarket Service since September 2020. She lives in Kryvyi Rih and does not have any other companies or even a registered individual entrepreneur.
However, her full namesake, Nadraha Oksana Ivanivna, has been working as a concertmaster at the Music Education Methodology Department at Kryvyi Rih Pedagogical University since 2003. In various documents on the department's website, she is mentioned at least until 2022 as a member of the subject committee of concertmasters.
Oksana Nadraha graduated from a music school and later from a conservatory. All her life she has worked as a concertmaster of various choirs. And legally, she was also the owner of Profmarket Service.
The company's accountant, Valentyna Makarova, did not confirm her personal acquaintance with the owner, only that Oksana Nadraha is currently living abroad, so she cannot be a concertmaster in Kryvyi Rih.
The journalist tried to contact the university's department to find out whether Nadraha worked there after 2022. However, no one has been answering the phone for a long time. Currently, Nadraha is not listed on the department's website.
Profmarket Service was founded by Artem Maletskyi. According to YouControl, he was registered as a founder in Kyiv, but his full namesake lives in Kryvyi Rih. There is almost no information about him in the public domain. However, there are court cases - in 2018, Raiffeisen Bank Aval sued Artem and Tetiana Maletska for a debt on an apartment loan.
According to the case file, Tetiana Maletska worked in the education department of the Metallurgical district of Kryvyi Rih. It is in this district that the Kryvyi Rih Pedagogical University, where Oksana Nadraha worked, is located, although universities are not subordinate to the city executive committee.
The journalist tried to contact the Maleckis, but their number was not in service. Also, none of the interviewed former employees of the company knew how to contact Oksana Nadraha. At the same time, there is no information about Nadraha's apartment from the registration data of Profmarket Service, even in the real estate register.
Since its foundation, Profmarket Service has been headed by Maryna Shatunova. According to YouControl, in 2020, she was also a member of the board of the regional organization Servants of the People in Kyiv. Other than that, nothing is known about Shatunova.
When asked why the only client of the company was the party, the woman simply hung up. It was possible to call her only from another number, but Shatunova refused to comment on the activities of Profmarket
"I did not work (in the party - ed.). I was included in the lists, I was never there... I only worked as a director for a company, I never worked anywhere else," Shatunova said when asked why she was listed as a member of the council of the Kyiv branch of the party.
Shatunova could not say who Oksana Nadraha was or where she was.
In 2022, Shatunova was replaced by Roman Vorobiov, a pro bono assistant to Yevheniia Kravchuk, a member of the political council and deputy head of the Servant of the People faction. Prior to that, according to the financial reports of the Servant of the People, Vorobyov was the party's commissioner.
Paying for outstaffing services is a common practice for political parties, as is spending a significant portion of funding on salaries.
However, in the case of the Servant of the People, the question arises: why was a contract worth hundreds of millions for four years awarded to a company with no previous experience? The contract was concluded with state funding, but it is not known whether the Kryvyi Rih concertmaster or someone else was making a profit from it.
It should be noted that the Servant of the People party received 870 million from the state budget during the great war.
