“Morshinskaya” Fridman: take the asset before the moment of confiscation. infographics
There are more and more people who want to use inefficient ARMA in their favor, writes ZN
You have obviously noticed lately how experts of various ranks say from almost every flat iron that some kind of Morshynska department, which is not like that, will almost tomorrow bury a company that Ukraine should be proud of. Behind all these aspirations, as you understand, is a banal desire to seize control of an asset before it is confiscated. This is hardly the first or last time. Therefore, we explain what’s what.
The StateWatch team is already on the project Trap Aggressor systematically monitors the processes in the National Agency for Tracing and Management of Assets (ARMA), which is now also involved in Morshynska. The key word we can use to describe the work of an organ is opacity. We are talking about another competition held by ARMA, where there was no smell of efficiency.
In June 2022, the court seized shares and funds totaling UAH 53.4 million in a company for the production and sale of mineral water owned by Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman. The Economic Security Bureau noted that, according to experts, in market conditions the value of this asset – the Morshynska brand – can reach UAH 10 billion.
Already February 9, 2023 ARMA announces competition for the search for a manager of the above-mentioned assets. A little more than a month passes, and March 13 is determined winner – LLC “Carpathian Mineral Waters”. It took the leadership of the National Agency for more than six months to find a manager for the production facilities of Morshinskaya. A typical story is when the management of ARMA explains the lengthy preparation for holding a tender for the search for a manager by the need for inspection, research and reporting on the method and possibility of asset management.
Interestingly, one of the most progressive investment companies in Ukraine – Dragon Capital – in mid-February called for a restart of the competition for the election of the manager of the company producing the aforementioned mineral water, due to procedural issues, as well as the fact that production facilities did not fall within the perimeter of the competition , “creating Mirgorodskaya for us. Then these calls from various unexpected lovers of mineral water grew like a snowball.
Panic is really incomprehensible. As well as why ARMA spent so much time preparing for the competition for the transfer of corporate rights to companies that, in simple terms, are producers of mineral water known to all Ukrainians. Of course, everything is relative. Let’s take even the companies about which wrote, namely – “AEROK” and “Vinnitsabytkhim”. In these cases, integral property complexes were transferred for management, consisting of a significant amount of movable and immovable property, which may not even be located within the boundaries of one region, so such procedures really require a significant amount of time for research and preparation for the competition.
At the same time, I note that even the completion of the competition and the election of the winner does not at all mean the transfer of the assets of Morshynskaya to management. This is only an intermediate stage on the way to the conclusion of the contract – a moment that may not happen at all. What, in fact, is noted in the official explanations ARMA about the timing of the competition: we are talking only about the deadline for accepting documents from potential managers, and not about the time for “concluding an agreement”.
Even more, even in 2022, ARMA had many cases when, after the completion of all bureaucratic procedures, contracts were not concluded. To establish the effectiveness of ARMA depending on the assets received for management, I propose to compare with the above-mentioned assets on the developed infographic.
From the above infographic, we can conclude that ARMA works the same way, namely, it is always inefficient, and this applies not only to the assets of Morshynskaya. The competitions held do not have any final result, because management contracts have not yet been concluded, respectively, the preservation of property is not carried out. Therefore, the asset deteriorates, is stolen or continues to work for the owner, which is especially strange if these are representatives of the aggressor country.
It is clear that there are still many who want to use the natural inefficiency of ARMA for their own purposes, and in the future there will be more, because the institutional weakness of ARMA is no less a problem than its opacity.
A long delay in concluding a contract every day leads to more and more losses. As, for example, with the Vinnitsabytkhim company, where, due to a power outage since November 2022, 1.5 thousand tons of raw materials and finished steel products unfit for use. The saddest and most revealing thing is that we are aware of these potential problems in the provision of housing and communal services to the enterprise in advance warned authorities.
In one of the previous texts I noted that the ideal option is not the liquidation of ARMA, but simply the replacement of inefficient leaders with new honest professionals. And the National Agency will show completely different results. Talk about the fate of ARMA has been going on for about a month, not a very wide circle of people is trying to agree on the concept. As a result, the president’s office took a position – to liquidate (partially or completely, it is not clear now). Some of the stakeholders simply joined the decision of the guarantor’s team, although restarting the body is a better option. But under any circumstances, those people who are now in charge of ARMA should be expelled from the department with a “wolf ticket”. Why? We explain.
There are many facts proving that the current leadership ineffectively manages ARMA. Lack of transparency, business involvement (transfer of seized assets to the management of companies well known to the management), even significant losses during the sale of seized property, during which an unknown commodity exchange was used, hiding information about the auction.
Now let’s talk about how these leaders calculated their salaries at the end of the military year 2022. It is clear that when work efficiency is striking, then the accrual of bonuses and bonuses is a normal practice. But in our case, the case is completely opposite. In response to a request for wages paid to ARMA for the last months of 2022, the following information is available. Let us immediately warn that the infographics do not include the interim acting head of ARMA Dmitry Zhoravovich, since he receives a salary as the head of the territorial administration in Kharkiv. And from there they sent a somewhat incomplete answer. Zhoravovich ignored a personal message in the messenger with our request to tell about the salary in November-December 2022.
“Morshinskaya” Fridman: take the asset before the moment of confiscation. infographics
“Morshinskaya” Fridman: take the asset before the moment of confiscation. infographics
Competitions for the search for a manager are held by ARMA very slowly and inefficiently, and are also completely non-transparent (the procedure for the physical examination of documentation submitted by applicant companies takes place behind closed doors). This, in fact, adds excitement to those who want to “replay everything”.
And in conclusion. The idea of “cutting off” territorial administrations has long been implemented, without giving them real powers to carry out the functions assigned by law to ARMA. Let it be, a kind of political decision. Although we don’t support it. But after the reduction of the actual functionality of these departments, the transfer of money from the regions to the central office began. Now it’s clear why, in order to calculate 100–150% of the allowances for yourself, without doing anything at the central office of ARMA. At the same time, the competition for the election of a permanent head of the National Agency continues, where the current acting director has passed to the next stage. head Zhoravovich, as well as other persons, including the head of one of the territorial departments, Stanislav Seregin. And what do you think they came up with in the central office? Two days before the testing, open disciplinary proceedings against Seryogin, of course, by the decision of Zhoravovich. This commission was headed by Anton Chubenko, who is very loyal to the current head of ARMA.
Alexander Lemenov
