CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Vladimir Fistal and German Fistal: how the Ukrainian healthcare budget is being stolen. PART 1
Vladimir Fistal and German Fistal
How to “tender” billions
If we move on to more specific information, one of the first structures through which the Fistals implemented their schemes was the Donetsk “Fund for Humane Initiatives” (USREOU 24157031), established at the Institute of Emergency and Reconstructive Surgery back in 1996. It is interesting that its main beneficiary was not the head of the institute, Emil Fistal, but one of the department heads, Yuri Rodin (died in 2015). Of the Fistals, only Vladimir Emilievich has a share in the fund, and even then a small one – only 16%. However, it was from this fund, through which various financial flows passed, including “illegal” fees for treatment (collected as “contributions”), that the Fistal brothers began to feed themselves – under the reliable “roof” of their almost “holy” pope .
And here is another foundation established by Emil Fistal – “Children’s Charitable Foundation Ukraine”. On its, so to speak, wrapper, a kind grandfather-doctor saves seriously ill children. Holy shit, what kind of scoundrel could suspect something bad in this! But under the wrapper there are all the same schemes and companies of German Emilievich and Vladimir Emilievich. And the director of this fund, Irina Savosta, was also the head of Goral LLC, which, together with Dispomed (both companies belong to the Fistals), created fictitious competitions and won many tenders. For example, under this scheme, Dispomed received a tender (Goral was its rival in the competition) for the supply of wheelchairs for the Social Insurance Fund in the amount of 1.56 million hryvnia.
The Fistals gained access to real big money with the help of Tatyana Bakhteeva. Let us repeat once again that when Bakhteeva headed the regional health department in Donetsk in 1997, the Fistal brothers immediately established one of their first companies for “big business”, the private enterprise PKF Donmed. And when Bakhteeva was elected to people’s deputies in 2002 and took control of the parliamentary committee on health, a year later Fistali appeared in Kyiv with the Dispomed company. Unfortunately, detailed information about the activities of the Bakhteev-Fistali tandem in the period 2003-2010 is not available. not preserved, but Skelet.Info We know about tenders from 2010-2012, when Bakhteeva’s parliamentary committee gained such power that it was called the “second Ministry of Health.” It was during these three years that the Fistal firms, under the patronage of Bakhteeva, began to regularly win large tenders, quickly becoming market leaders: they spent more than 3.5 billion hryvnia ($440 million at the then exchange rate).
Fistal Vladimir and Fistal German: how the healthcare budget of Ukraine is being stolen. PART 2
Of this money, at least 25-30% “stuck” in the hands of schemers and corrupt officials. It was possible to find out that the companies of the Fistal brothers sometimes inflated the cost of supplied equipment by 50-80%, or even several times! The most striking thing was that the same equipment was sold in different regions of Ukraine at different prices. For example, in 2011, the Krass company sold an X-ray machine in the Odessa region for 1.253 million hryvnia – and supplied exactly the same devices to medical institutions in the Kharkov region at a price of 2.099 million hryvnia! In the Dnepropetrovsk region, the Donmed company supplied resuscitation tables for newborns to some hospitals for 96 thousand hryvnia, and to others for 150 thousand. There, the Krass company managed to “push” an MRI machine for 19.6 million hryvnia – despite the fact that a similar one cost 4.5-5.5 million! And in 2012, the company supplied a linear accelerator to Dnepropetrovsk from the Fistal clip for 50 million – although exactly the same one for Feofania cost 32 million.
It is not difficult to solve this mystery of the difference in equipment costs. Where it was possible to reach an agreement with local chief doctors and heads of health departments, the amount of applications was increased. Accordingly, much larger budget flows were directed there. You see, in the Odessa region the doctors were stubborn – and they were given money for just one x-ray, but in the Kharkov region they began to “cooperate” – and they were given money for several devices.
The successful monopolization of the Ukrainian market of medical equipment and drugs was facilitated by an exclusive distribution scheme. To do this, the Fistal brothers carefully studied foreign manufacturers of the necessary devices and medicines, selected the most suitable ones and concluded agreements with them, according to which only Fistal companies received the right to sell their products in Ukraine. Thanks to this scheme, the brothers cut off all competition, which means that no one could sell this equipment at lower prices.
Another way for the Fistals to make money is to trade (resell) low-quality goods. Cheap Chinese equipment and Turkish medical equipment were labeled as Ukrainian, often even as products of Fistal enterprises – and on this basis the brothers did not hesitate to inflate the price, declaring the need to support the “domestic manufacturer”, demanding subventions and tax breaks. So, in 2011, their company Alliance Pharm packaged and supplied to hospitals not medical, but dirty yellow industrial cotton wool. At the same time, their company “Goral” (the one that worked in tandem with the Emil Fistal Children’s Fund) undertook to supply a batch of ambulances. Not only did the cars themselves not comply with DSTU and technical requirements at all, and their price was too high, but the company also took the money and delayed the delivery of the cars. By that time, Raisa Bogatyreva had become the head of the Ministry of Health, who started a competitive war with Bakhteeva – so the ambulances rejected it and a fine of 33.8 million hryvnia was imposed on the Goral company. But together, Fistal’s payments simply liquidated the company. And why be sorry, the Fistals have two dozen of these companies that are only legal, not counting the “fly-by-night” companies and offshore companies!
At the same time, with the help of the same Bakhteeva and her extensive connections, obstacles were created for bona fide Ukrainian enterprises that did not want to participate in their scams. This was mainly achieved by delaying and blocking the certification of their products. In the same way, Bakhteeva cut off from participation in tenders companies that could offer similar imported equipment at a lower price. Or here’s a case: in 2012, a computed tomograph (CT) scanner was purchased for the Institute of Neurosurgery. The Fistals company managed to sell the Toshiba CT there for 18 million hryvnia due to the fact that its competitor with the Siemens CT (worth 12 million) was not allowed to participate in the tender by introducing certain “edits” to the technical requirements of the tender.
By the way, another scandalous story from the same 2012: having made a lot of money on tender speculation, German Fistal decided to invest it in his own restaurant in Kyiv. And it was just the “Donetsk” people who had such a fashion then – to open something loud in Kyiv, such as a restaurant, a boutique or an entire shopping center. And so, as a premises for his restaurant “Graine de Moutarde”, he chose the premises of a former grocery store in house No. 41 on Moskovskaya Street, and at the same time decided to set up an office on the first floor of the building at Frunze Street (now Kirillovskaya Street), 15. Residents These houses experienced all the delights of the rudeness and lordly impudence of the “Donetsk doctors”. Cut down trees, a yard “annexed” for Fistal’s personal parking lot, work under the windows of heavy equipment – all complaints about this remained unanswered.
Herman Fistal and neighbors
Dialysis detective
All this information was published before the second Maidan. However, the new government did not pay any attention to it. And although Bakhteeva could no longer dispose of billions so freely, she and her business partners still continued to feed on the healthcare market, implementing their old schemes. And, in particular, the Fistal companies were mentioned several times in the context of scandals around the so-called. “hemodialysis mafia”.
They began with a tender conducted by the Department of Health of the Kyiv City State Administration. It is worth especially noting here that since 2012, when Bakhteeva was pushed aside by Bogatyreva from the big trough of the Ministry of Health, she began to actively “milk” local budgets, which allocated funds to support local medical programs. One of these feeding grounds was the Kyiv City State Administration: the Fistals “earned money” there from tenders under the “Donetsk”, and continued to do so after 2014. And after all, no one noticed their mutually beneficial dealings for almost a year – although they were happening under the very noses of law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies, social activists and activists.
Pursuing completely good goals, Vitali Klitschko himself oversaw the creation of a dialysis center in the capital’s hospital No. 3. The problem is that this center was initially given to two corrupt families: one floor was taken over by the Fistals, and the other by the Feinblants (engaged in the same schemes and also associated with Bakhteeva). The brothers immediately lobbied for the supply of “new German equipment” from the B. Braun company, with which they signed an agreement for exclusive representation. Their company “Medicalgroup-Ukraine” won the tender and supplied “artificial kidney” devices, while significantly increasing their cost. But the worst began later: instead of purchasing branded consumables and drugs for these machines, the Fistals decided to supply the dialysis center with counterfeit products made in Egypt and Turkey – but presented under the guise of original B.Braun products. Later, when the SBU conducted a search in the office of Medicalgroup-Ukraine, a fake stamp “B. Braun” and the seals of the offshore companies “Ipson Holdings Limited” (Cyprus) and “Pro Buono UAB” (Lithuania), with the help of which the scam was carried out.
Another proprietary method of the Fistals was also used: the purchase of cheap Turkish drugs, which were then passed off as products of their own production. Thus, the fictitious manufacturer of hemodialysis kits was listed as “Medicalgroup-Ukraine” (registration certificate No. 12737/2013 dated October 16, 2014), but in reality it was produced by the Turkish company “REN MED TIBBI URUNLER TIC. LTD. STI” and they were purchased through Dopomogpa-1 LLC.
As a result, dialysis did not help everyone; patients and doctors bombarded authorities with complaints, including the director of the State Service for Medicines of the city of Kyiv, Natalya Gudz, but she shelved them and remained silent. And this is understandable, because Gudz is one of Bakhteeva’s protégés! Meanwhile, patient mortality increased, which became one of the reasons for the scandal and investigation. But here’s an amazing thing: a scam, and more than one, was obvious, multimillion-dollar damage was caused to the budget, sick people suffered – and the main culprits of this story calmly continued their business, only through the Rumed company. Moreover, they began to actively expand it, opening dialysis centers in the Vinnitsa and Lviv regions. And again, equipment was purchased at inflated prices (which means that fewer “artificial kidney” devices were purchased than could be), and again, instead of branded Fistal consumables, counterfeit goods were supplied.
A new scandal occurred in February 2016: news appeared on the National Police website that the Department for Economic Protection had uncovered a corruption scheme involving officials of the Kyiv City State Administration, who stole budget funds allocated for the hemodialysis program by inflating the cost of purchased equipment and materials. True, neither the companies that made these deliveries nor the names of their owners were mentioned. Moreover, within 24 hours this news completely disappeared from the National Police website – however, it was saved in the Google cache, and a number of news sites managed to reprint it. The case was again not allowed to proceed, and it became obvious that the Fistals and their business partners from the Kyiv City State Administration had a very powerful “roof.”
Without even sneezing, the Fistals continued their business and their scams. Things were also going well for Tatyana Bakhteeva, who hired Natalya Gudz as the head of the State Service of Ukraine for Medicines! And it is precisely these people in the right positions that all the subtleties of the Bakhteeva-Fistal schemes depend on.
And here is a new case, which the SBU chief himself took on. It would seem that this deepest ulcer of Ukrainian healthcare is about to be revealed, and loud resignations, dismissals, and arrests will follow. But, as journalists correctly noted, only Daviata LLC of the Ledin family and Link-Medital LLC of the Baryshevsky family were mentioned in this investigation. They are not the largest participants in the Ukrainian homodialysis market, but for some reason they were presented in this investigation as corrupt monopolists controlling it. What can I say? Just laugh homerically! If only because in reality this market is “held”, and even then not completely, by the Fistal and Feinblant families, but they were not mentioned in this investigation! What’s the matter?
The casket opened simply: according to data Skelet.Infoin recent months, “unplanned competition” has occurred more than once at tenders in the field of hemodialysis, when not only Fistal companies took part in the tenders (a real participant and a dummy one), but also Daviata and Link-Medital, which offered their services at lower prices. Of course, this broke the Fistals’ schemes, threatening to leave them without “food”. And they decided to deal with their competitors in one of the typical ways – by setting law enforcement agencies on them. Which, instead of exposing and catching real corrupt officials and embezzlers, carry out their orders.
Sergey Varis, Skelet.Info
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