Why state began to fight with its own weapons manufacturers
Two weeks ago, a defence industry forum was held in Kyiv, where the government called on foreign companies to invest in Ukraine and create joint ventures with Ukrainian producers.
"I will be happy if they now find an opportunity for themselves, their countries, their companies to develop local production in Ukraine. Whether they do it on their own, together with Ukrainian companies, with state-owned companies, with private companies, is less important. The main thing is that they develop this production in Ukraine," said theMinister of Industry Oleksandr Kamyshin at the forum.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine is developing a special economic regime for the defence industry.
And in two weeks, two major producers of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex claim that their work is being obstructed?
First , theNational Anti-Corruption Bureau conducted searches at the offices and residences of employees of Archer, Ukraine's only manufacturer of cooled thermal imaging sights .
And then CB LUCH announced the third visit of the SASU audit to the company.
So what is going on? Is the government, with a clear tendency to reduce arms aid from the West, destroying its own military-industrial complex? Or is the military-industrial complex the biggest criminal in the country?
Archer's CEO, Oleksandr Yaremenko, posted about the searches on his Facebook page.
He posted a colourful photo of the broken safe and added that during the searches, NABU representatives seized phones, computers and documents related to the execution of government contracts. He noted that the company voluntarily handed over the equipment, all passwords and documents.
However, the biggest resonance was caused by Yaremenko's words that law enforcement officers copied design drawings and documentation, software products that are the intellectual property of the company and the state. He also said that the company could not produce anything and was a "gasket" for the Ministry of Defence.
In response, the NABU confirmed the searches but denied seizing anything that could harm production.
"It has now been established that one of these companies has entered into a number of contracts to supply the defense forces with thermal imaging devices. The total amount of the contracts is almost UAH 1.5 billion, of which the company received an advance payment (from 80 to 100%). Despite this, there was a violation of the delivery time for more than 9 months, which led to the Armed Forces receiving the equipment necessary to combat Russian aggression in a timely manner," the NABU said in a statement.
The Bureau claims that as of early August, the company had not delivered products worth almost UAH 200 million. This led to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine filing a lawsuit to recover the receivables and penalties, the NABU said.
On this basis, NABU should have opened a case against Lviv Arsenal with a debt of over a billion long ago. But for some reason, the bureau is not interested in this company.
"The search warrant was not prepared at all. It says that I took state funds and failed to fulfill contracts. This is not true. Since 2014, I have fulfilled 78 contracts, 8 of which are with the Ministry of Defence, because it is the most difficult structure. We work with foundations, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine. My company is called the MoD's gasket. My Czech company is called that too. This is unfair," Yaremenko told Censor.NET.
"They didn't ask me that when the war started, by the decision of the management - because Izyum was bombed, and there were planes flying into Cherkasy - I took my guys to our partners in the Czech Republic, who gave me production and conditions. Thanks to this, we continue to fulfill government contracts and have already completed 23 contracts. We stumbled on two contracts and delayed the execution a little bit, because we had been receiving sabotage for a whole year - blocking of accounts, customs fraud..." explains the Archer CEO.
According to Yaremenko, the investigative actions are the result of a premeditated statement to the NABU. "I was warned about these troubles. Today I explained all this to the committee, and I am ready to explain it to NABU," he said.
According to Yaremenko, the detectives did not understand the specifics of the company's work. "Why was the money withdrawn? I made a subscription to myself, to my company, because we were told to leave: we bought components all over the world and made 80-90% of the devices in the Czech Republic, and then finished them in Ukraine and did the control firmware again," says the Archer executive.
"This company is not mine, it is a Ukrainian company. And if it is destroyed, tens of thousands of our guys will die. We can't imagine how this war would have unfolded since 2014 if it wasn't for our devices. We are now even helping the guys remotely," he stressed.
Yaremenko emphasizes that he is not going to withdraw the company from Ukraine, but wants to convey his position to NABU.
Of course, the seizure of two laptops and a phone is hardly a blockade of production.
Although Yaremenko notes that this has made his and the accountant's work much more difficult. But the case against the sole producer seems strange.
However, compared to the SASU's visits to Luch Design Bureau, this is just a start.
Censor.NET has repeatedly written about the SASU's idiotic position that companies supplying the army should not have made a profit. As a result of this conclusion, some companies have already been visited by law enforcement officers. In order to remedy the situation, MPs had to pass a separate resolution of the Verkhovna Rada that allowed companies to make a profit.
But at the same time, Alla Basalayeva's department still considers itself right. And it continues to inspect enterprises for profit. This is the third time they have visited Luch Design Bureau during martial law.
"10 days after our company's public appeal regarding the falsity of the State Audit Service's conclusions and related threats, on 29 September, the State Audit Service began an audit of 'certain issues' of the State Design Bureau Luch, including the inclusion of profit in the price of our products. As you know, the State Audit Service had earlier appealed to the Ministry of Defence to recover the profits made by the enterprises," the design bureau said in a statement.
The State Design Bureau LUCH reminds us that it uses its own working capital to develop new weapons systems, eliminate the effects of missile strikes, restore and replace damaged equipment and products, relocate production and increase production capacity.
"These working capital funds are formed by profits received from government contracts, among other things. The permitted amount of profit is directly stipulated by Resolution No. 363 of 3 March 2021, which is still in force today," the CB notes.
The requirement of the State Audit Service to return profits is critical to the company's operations and calls into question the survival of the defence industry, the company says.
While Basalaeva took the first waves of complaints about Resolution 335 in silence, this time she was obviously prepared. Firstly, the head of the SASU herself promptly made a statement to the media. Secondly, even before the statement by Luch Design Bureau was issued, some media outlets published columns by unknown experts about violations by Oleg Korostylov's company.
"The State Audit Service has revealed numerous violations when unscrupulous producers created various schemes to illegally extract billions of hryvnias from the state budget. This is unacceptable! In fact, this is looting during the war, which producers hide behind patriotic slogans. All information on the relevant violations was passed to law enforcement agencies," said Alla Basalaeva.
The head of the SASU also added that all attempts by manufacturers to shift responsibility for non-compliance with the terms of 100% funded government contracts onto auditors are manipulations. She cited the situation with Luch Design Bureau as an example.
"The conclusions drawn by the auditors will in no way lead to a halt in the production of critical weapons, including several missile systems," Basalaeva stressed.
At this point, I would like to ask Basalayeva: is she deliberately pretending, or does she really understand nothing about the consequences of her work?
Because it is the money from the profits that Basalaeva is chasing after that is used to relocate production and create new types of weapons.
No one knows where Basalaeva was in March 2022, when the Ukrainian military with Stugnas and Corsairs were liberating Kyiv region. The SASU audit, with its thousands of pages, will not help set anything on fire in Crimea. Except for some straws.
However the use of the SASU's work in recent years is unfortunate. Nowadays, SASU audits are conducted on those who the authorities do not like. We are talking about arms suppliers and the fact that personal income tax is taken away from local authorities after an SASU audit. The authorities have not known for a long time how to get rid of Volodymyr Kudrytskyi from Ukrenergo, and law enforcement officers are now auditing the SASU there as well.
For some reason, however, there is no audit of large-scale road construction. But this is probably not the right time. At a time when our Western partners are reducing their supplies of material, it is better to fight with our own military-industrial complex...
The following is a purely authorial assumption, but the story seems to be that the state has run out of money for road construction. And not everyone can get contracts in the defense sector.
And one of the ways to get money for other areas would be to gut the profits of those who work for the military-industrial complex. That is why the silence of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance in the story of Resolution 335 looks like they benefited from this story to simply redirect cash flows.
Tatiana Nikolayenko, Censor.NET
