How eggs for 17 have been transformed into hotels in Croatia: from life and affairs of Ministry of Defense’s food mafia
The most scandalous supplier of goods to the Ministry of Defense, as it turns out, bought several hotels during the full-scale invasion. Journalists found them. And Censor.NET reveals the unknown details of how this scheme became possible.
The most high-profile corruption scandal of 2023 would undoubtedly be the 17 eggs that the company "Active Company" included in its product catalog. This is one of the many companies that are part of the so-called Bila Tserkva's group of Tetiana Hlyniana. For almost 30 years, these companies have been making money by supplying food to the army.
For most officials in the Defense Ministry, Tetiana Hlyniana is a "furrier." This is how she is called by the name of her first company, a supplier to the Defense Ministry.
For the first half of 2023, the Ministry of Defense signed 10 contracts with companies that took over the supply of military units in various regions.
Among them, the largest contract was awarded to the company already mentioned in the egg scandal, Active Company, which received 13 billion, its closest competitors signed contracts for 8.9 billion, and two other companies, which are essentially representatives of the same group, received about 4.5 billion each.
In the previous year, 2022, Premium Company (renamed Active Company) had the most contracts - 8 .
After Yurii Nikolov's scandalous article, the Defense Ministry revised some prices in the catalog. For example, the price of eggs in the most famous contract was reduced from 17 to 9 UAH, and the price of potatoes from 22 to 14.8 UAH. Also, as part of negotiations through correspondence with various suppliers, prices for sturgeon were reduced from 450 to 200, instant coffee from 750 to 510, green tea from 363 to 250, and flour from 18 to 15.30.
After that, the procurement was also transferred to Prozorro, with an upper limit on the price of products.
After the scandal, Active Company did not participate in tenders. However, another company from Hlyniana's group, Grand Consult, won tenders worth more than UAH 8 billion in 2023.
Contracts for UAH 2.8 billion were signed in December 2023. At the last tender, Grand Consult won 10 lots.
The increase in the number of lots did not significantly affect which companies won there. For a while, there was a thought to reduce the catalog items, but this would have made life easier for army suppliers. They would just have to offer fewer products. So now the ministry is shifting to procurement of certain product groups so that manufacturers can participate in tenders.
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May 2023. The Ministry of Defense holds a meeting on changes to the Armed Forces food catalog. Officials are disputing whether to remove veal and 25 other items from the catalog.
- "We were told to remove everything we didn't order, so we have to comply," says one of the officials.
- "We didn't order it because we had *** tons of seized Belarusian veal. How was I supposed to put that in the report? Reducing the catalog will only benefit suppliers...
- But while you're arguing, Hlyniana is already building a hotel in Croatia, they say.
- Oh, you'd think it was the first one.
This was the first mention of where Tetiana Hlyniana was withdrawing funds. And then it was already known that she did not live in Ukraine but moved to Croatia.
Boutique hotel Luxe 2
And this week, NV Business journalist Artem Alin found those hotels that had been gossiped about in the Defense Ministry for years. However, everyone was satisfied with everything.
A source of NV Business in Split said that he had seen Hlyniana managing one of the hotels. Currently, she is associated with the Mirari, Ora and another hotel, the name of which the source did not know.
NV Business managed to find out that the first hotel is registered to the legal entity NAZARII d.o.o. (Brela, Croatia). Croatian websites that publish business intelligence based on legal registers indicate that the founder of this company since 2016 is Tatiana Hlyniana. In 2022, her daughter Iryna Kut became its owner for some time. Since the fall of 2023, Hlyniana has been the beneficiary of three more Croatian companies:
- ZEN ADRIA d.o.o.
- PIGMENT d.o.o.
- MIMOZA d.o.o.
The first legal entity is the Ora Hotel. The other two are registered at the same address as Hotel Luxe. MIMOZA d.o.o. is the legal entity that also operates the Posh Hotel, which is located almost on the coast.
The place of registration of NAZARII d.o.o. in Brela is most likely the place of registration of Tetiana Hlyniana personally. This address is listed in one of the Croatian registers.
This means that these 4 legal entities are related to four hotels and one private house.
Mirari Boutique Hotel has 18 rooms, a restaurant and a rooftop pool.
The 4-star Ora Hotel has 24 rooms, a restaurant and a congress center for 50 people.
The 4* Luxe Boutique Hotel has 30 rooms, a restaurant, a spa and a conference room for 8 people.
The 5* Posh Hotel has 6 apartments, a rooftop pool, and a SPA center.
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Following the publication of Nikolov's article, proceedings were initiated by the SBI and NABU.
So far, the results of their work are unknown. In order to establish the state's losses, law enforcement officers had to seize documents from military units where products were supplied by companies, including Hlyniana.
At the same time, according to the Accounting Chamber's report, Active Company LLC supplied 50.9 million kits in the first half of 2023 at a price of UAH 137.04. Given that the price of food supplies in the SSU during this period was UAH 92.45, and in the National Guard - UAH 118.6, the income of Hlyniana's company compared to the SSU's food supplies amounted to UAH 2.2 billion, and compared to the price of the National Guard - UAH 0.9 billion.
In addition, an audit conducted by the territorial department of the Accounting Chamber in Kyiv, Kyiv, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions (in Kyiv) at the military unit *** found that Active Company LLC, under an agreement concluded with the Ministry of Defense dated 23.12.2022 No. 286/2/22/75 (as amended on 20.02.2023 No. 286/2/22/75/1), supplied certain food products at inflated prices.
For example, according to the Internet resource, prices for chicken eggs of C1 category in June 2023 ranged from UAH 5.66 to 6.05 per piece (Kvochka chicken eggs (C1 10 pcs.) - UAH 56.63 (5.66 per unit), Yasensvit chicken eggs (C1 10 pcs.) - UAH 57.16 (5.72 per unit), Yasensvit chicken eggs (C1 18 pcs. ) - UAH 108.98 (6.05 per unit), Yasensvit chicken eggs (C1 30 pcs. ) - UAH 179.18 (5.97 per unit)).
According to the agreement, the price of a chicken egg of the first category per 1 piece was UAH 17.0, which was 2.8 times higher. Subsequently, the prices were reduced to UAH 9.0 per piece by an additional agreement.
The price of chicken thighs, according to the agreement, was set at UAH 120.0 per kilogram. At the same time, according to Internet resources, the price of chicken thigh increased from December 2022 from UAH 97.0 per kg to UAH 109.57 per kg in June 2023, but did not reach the limit of UAH 120.0 per kg as stipulated in the agreement.
According to Internet resources, the price of sunflower oil per liter as of 01.01.2023 was UAH 70.29, with a constant downward trend and in June amounted to UAH 65.77 per liter. The contract stipulates the price of refined sunflower oil at UAH 109.0 per kilogram, or, calculated, UAH 102.5 per liter (UAH 109.0 x 940 g/1000 g), which is 1.5 times higher than the price of oil in December 2022.
After the publicity, the Ministry of Defense suspended the execution of a number of contracts, in particular at the request of Nova-Postach and Active Company.
According to the certificate of participation in the audit of the head of the sector of commodity research of military property, laboratory of engineering, transport, commodity and special types of research of Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise S.V. Berehovyi, who is involved in one of the criminal proceedings, it is known that
- under the contract with PREMIUM COMPANY LLC (also an enterprise of the Hlyniana Group) dated 07.03.2022 No. 286/2/22/14 (for UAH 3,942,920,108.00), the average total price overstatement in the Product Catalog (Annex 13.1) is 7.42%, which is why the value of the contract as of the date of its conclusion is overstated by UAH 292,564,762.0, and as a result of its execution it is overstated by UAH 320,146,376.76 (7.42% x 4,314,641,196.34).
It is also interesting that according to the procedure for prepayment of goods, works and services in the Ministry of Defense, approved by the order of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine No. 43 dated 14.02.2020, the decision to prepay more than UAH 50,000,000.00 was to be made only by the Minister.
Oleksii Reznikov
However, Deputy Minister of Defense Shapovalov, who is now in pre-trial detention, approved, in particular, the decision of 08.03.2022 No. 220/1401 to make an advance payment totaling UAH 300,000,000.0 under the contract with PREMIUM COMPANY LLC dated 07.03.2022 No. 286/2/22/14 (prepayment for March by (4.49%) of the contract amount (UAH 3,942,920,108.00), with a maturity date of 08.06.2022.
According to the materials of the same proceedings, in the second half of 2022, ACTIVE COMPANY LLC did not supply certain food products (by quantity, products assortment) totaling UAH 3,668,293.15, and at the same time, without the consent of military units, supplied food products that military units did not order in the amount of UAH 336,420.72.
If you still have questions about how the set purchase works and how the price of an egg affects it, let me explain.
In general, eggs are not the most common item on the menu, as you might think.
A first-grade chicken egg - 1.13% of the total cost of the service provided.
Chicken eggs of the premium grade - 0.44% of the total cost of the service provided.
But then there is fraud when the cost of some products included in the catalog can be used to buy several others but within the cost of the kit, which makes it possible to significantly inflate the cost of the products.
As a result, you can buy several hotels on the Croatian coast and lead a quiet life and a profitable business there.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor. NET
