Patskan's dismissal turned into Santa Barbara
The head of the Accounts Chamber, Valery Patskan, wrote a letter of resignation of his own free will. Then he called back. Then he wrote again. Or didn't you write? He was supposed to be replaced by Gennady Plis, understandable to the office of the president. Or not, no less understandable “servant of the people” Andrei Klochko. But the vote in Parliament failed! And there will be a new competition. Or it won’t, writes ZN.
This is how the story of the change of the head of the Accounts Department looks like for an outside observer.
What is the meaning of “Santa Barbara” around the appointment head of the Accounts Chamber, can be explained by a simple but very important example for the country – defense procurement. Buckle up, it will be interesting.
Valery Patskan was elected as a people's deputy from the BPP and was appointed head of the Accounts Chamber during the “criminal regime of his predecessors”. That is, the fact that in the fourth year of the reign of Volodymyr Zelensky, Patskan remained in office, looks like complete nonsense. At least for the power itself.
After all, the head of the presidential office Andriy Yermak and his deputy Oleg Tatarov have long furnished the SBU, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Police, the State Bureau of Investigation, the Financial Security Bureau, the Ministry of Justice, the Office of the Prosecutor General and the State Audit Service with their personnel. That is, in fact, all departments that should monitor corruption and crime in the actions of government bodies that are completely controlled by the office of the president.
Only SAP and NABU remain the window to fresh air in law enforcement agencies. But their viability is now in question, because in the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office everything is still based on the personal superhuman efforts of the new head Alexander Klymenko, who still has a half-staffed network of prosecutors. And in the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, without a full-fledged head, too – some in the forest, some for firewood.
Of course, NABU and SAP can still be corrected. Because the West, on the eve of the “Great Recovery” sponsored by it, will not allow Ukrainian pennies to be left alone with the euro-dollar feeder. But this will not happen in civil control bodies.
Having received its head of the Accounts Chamber, the office of the president will finally consolidate the advantage of Bankova in the distribution of powers between the branches of power and “manual” control over budget funds. Especially defensive ones.
Patskana's dismissal turned into Santa Barbara
The Accounts Chamber is a parliamentary body of financial control. That is, it depends on a much larger number of components of power. And that is why it retained subjectivity sufficient to conduct investigations on an especially large scale. Therefore, the dismissal of Patskan attracts attention.
For example, it was the Accounts Chamber that, in spite of the attempts to turn off the dismissal of Patskan, allowed itself to publicly announce the ineffectiveness of Zelensky's vertical in the fight against coronavirus. Namely, that half of the money from the special COVID fund was rolled into asphalt, and UAH 12 billion simply could not be spent just on treating patients, salaries to doctors and overcoming the consequences of the pandemic.
Now there is a new one in front of the Accounts call. Due to the war in Ukraine, for objective reasons, the emphasis in budget financing has shifted. If before the invasion, every ninth hryvnia of the state budget passed through the offices of the Ukraftodorists, now half of the budget goes through the Ministry of Defense.
According to a letter from Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov to the head of the Defense Committee of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Zavitnevich, as of October 1, the ministry is allocated UAH 736 billion in 2022, that is, more than half of all expenditures of the general fund of the state budget. Of this amount, UAH 438 billion is for social expenses (including salaries for soldiers), and UAH 298 billion is for logistics. Of this amount, UAH 155 billion was intended for the purchase and modernization of weapons and UAH 21 billion for the repair of military equipment. That is, this flow should somehow be shot through by our foreign partners.
But the rest of the purchases for almost UAH 75 billion are actually thrown to the mercy of fate. Namely: UAH 49 billion for the purchase of clothing items, UAH 19 billion for monopolized army food, another UAH 6 billion for fuel, the quality of which may not always correspond to the purchase price.
There is also overdue receivables in the amount of UAH 47 billion – this is money that was paid to some businessmen to supply something, but they did not deliver anything or so late that they managed to scroll the received advances several times.
All these numbers are opportunities for some rear generals. Not for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which heroically fight in what the Ministry of Defense gives them. Not for the General Staff, which wages war with what the Ministry of Defense gives it. Namely, for the Ministry of Defense, which performs the functions of a supply manager. And so it does that there is already talk of geshefts on army contracts.
For example, Ukrainian suppliers of berets and clothing say that the Ministry of Defense turned its nose about the purchase of domestic goods for a very long time.
But at the same time, rumors spread around the market about the purchase of Turkish berets for UAH 3,500, while Ukrainian cost about 2000 UAH. And the Ministry of Defense still couldn’t buy winter clothes made in Ukraine for UAH 3,000–3,500, as requested by our manufacturers. But allegedly found the opportunity to contract the Turkish one for 6000 UAH per set.
The scheme has already become a classic when the Ministry of Defense buys Ukrainian body armor “Corsair” through foreign “gaskets”. Even before the invasion, this was officially practiced with a company from the Czech Republic, and during a full-scale war, they started talking about a Polish counterparty. In this and the cases described above with the Turks, the money under the contract is immediately withdrawn abroad, and it can be divided without regard to Ukrainian law enforcement officers. But this practice itself could and should have become the subject of an investigation by the Accounts Chamber. Since the chamber is not a body that looks only at individual articles of the Criminal Code, but considers the activities of business executives from different angles – from the point of view of both corruption and inefficiency.
Such a supervisory body would be very appropriate, since in next year, an unprecedented amount of UAH 858 billion should go through the cash desk of the Ministry of Defense – this is a third of the expenditures of the state budget-2023.
After all, now the purchases of the Ministry of Defense, the country's largest buyer, are a black box. Attempts by anti-corruption officials to implement, in particular defense procurement (government decree No. 1275), a report on the results of the procurement on the cost per unit of goods was not liked by the Ministry of Defense.
The appeal of the parliamentarians is also not to the liking of the purchasers of the Ministry of Defense. The head of the Anti-Corruption Committee of the Verkhovna Rada politely asked the ministry: from whom and at what cost did it buy uniforms and body armor this year? In no way was there any talk of disclosing the volumes and addresses of deliveries, which is really important for security. The disclosure of purchase prices and the names of suppliers would make it possible to stop talking about deliveries of imported and Ukrainian uniforms at an inflated price through “inserts”. And also to confirm to our Western partners that nothing is stolen on an industrial scale on the way to the front.
The answer to the appeal was given by Deputy Minister of Defense Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who is formally responsible for the purchase of “clothes”. He absolutely cynically announced that the procurement reports would be made public in accordance with government decree No. 169 – only 70 days after the end of martial law. By the way, this government act, as of the date of Shapovalov's response, has already lost its force for several days due to the adoption of Decree No. 1275.
Consequently, the rear of the Ministry of Defense can safely buy up from anyone you want and for as much as you want, advancing supplies up to fantastic proportions.
The controlled Accounts Chamber, if Patskan is dismissed, will not delve into defense procurement accounting. Although only the scale of billions of purchases is risky in the understanding of controllers and should be of interest to them, as well as UAH 47 billion of overdue receivables.
Everything will be attributed to the war.
Yuriy Nikolov
The head of the Accounts Chamber, Patskan, filed a letter of resignation, and then withdrew it. Document
NABU and SAPO completed the investigation of the case against the head of the Accounts Chamber Patskan
Criminal skeletons in the closet of Valery Patskan
