“Municipal security” of Kyiv was created for money laundering // CV collage
The auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration (KSCA) have recently completed an audit of the activities of the Municipal Guard. During the audit, it was found that during 2020-2022, the management of this organization committed violations and shortcomings in its work for a total of UAH 13.2 million. In particular, the “Municipal Okhrana” unreasonably increased the salaries of its employees and paid them unreasonable bonuses, ordered legal services from private lawyers, having specialized specialists on its staff, set prices for security services without any calculations, collaborated with a public formation “ Municipal Guard” without financial or socio-economic effect.
As became known KVRecently, the Department of Internal Financial Control and Audit of the KSCA published the results of a scheduled audit of the activities of the municipal organization (KO) “Municipal Guard”.
Relevant audit report № 070-2-2-04/16 dated November 16, 2022. On the website of the aforementioned department, this document was published in early January of this year – when it became known which comments of the auditors were taken into account by the leadership of the “Municipal Guard”, and which were ignored.
As noted in the report, the relevant department of the KSCA checked “the legality and reliability of financial and budgetary reporting in the Municipal Guard, the correctness of accounting, compliance with legislative acts, plans, procedures, the legality and efficiency of the use of budgetary funds.” The audit covered the period of activity of this communal organization from January 1, 2020 to January 25, 2022.
What the auditors found
During the audit, the “auditors” found that during 2020-2021 and the first half of 2022, UAH 465.3 million was allocated from the budget of Kyiv for the maintenance of the Municipal Guard. This communal organization earned another 2.6 million hryvnias in its “treasury” by carrying out economic activities. Based on the results of the audit, facts of violations and shortcomings were established in various segments of the activity of the CO “Municipal Okhrana” for a total of UAH 13.2 million, of which UAH 13.16 million were unlawful losses, another UAH 58.3 thousand were ineffective and risk loss.
So, according to the audit report, in 2020, the municipal security company “Municipal Okhrana” unreasonably increased the official salaries of employees in connection with the use of inflated sizes of the so-called “ratio coefficients” in their calculation (according to the legislation of Ukraine, the salary of security workers) of enterprises is calculated according to special formula (CF), as a result of which unreasonable (additional) expenses in the amount of UAH 11.3 million were incurred by the budget of Kyiv.
At the same time, according to the auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration, in the period 2020-2021 there were 56 cases of accrual of material assistance and incentive bonuses to employees of organizations that were more than it was provided for by the relevant orders for their payment.
In addition, the “auditors” identified one case of charging an allowance in the absence of an order. All this led to the excessive use of funds from the budget of Kyiv for a total of 966.4 thousand hryvnias
Also, the auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration found out that in 2020, the municipal security company “Municipal Okhrana” used budget funds for a total of UAH 159.5 thousand inefficiently. That is how much the organization transferred the Tsypin and Partners law office for legal services. For these funds, “private lawyers”, in particular, conducted a comprehensive analysis of the statutory documents of the “Municipal Guard” and compiled an analytical report on the legality of the economic activity of the enterprise. According to the auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration, “the services provided duplicate the duties of full-time employees of the legal service of the municipal organization” – as of 2020, three lawyers worked in the “Municipal Guard” (two – full-time, one more – “half-time”) ).
In addition, according to the “auditors”, in the list of services provided by the law firm “Tsypin and Partners”, there are those that KO “Municipal Okhrana” could perform without the involvement of legal specialists. Among such services are “search for expert institutions for conducting an examination of computer hardware and software products”, analysis of software deficiencies, etc. not lawyers.
In addition, the auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration established the facts of the absence of “a nomenclature method of warehouse accounting and an automated process of accounting for inventory items, failure to communicate to the responsible employee the rules of document flow and technologies for processing accounting information.” These and other shortcomings, according to the auditors, create risks of incomplete, untimely and unreliable reflection of business transactions related to the movement of material assets and their preservation.
In particular, according to the results of the inventory, the auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration established the absence of 19 car tires with a total value of 36.7 thousand hryvnias. The reasons for the absence of this property, the auditors could not establish in connection with the conscription of the person financially responsible for these tires. In addition, the Department of Internal Financial Control and Audit of the Kyiv City State Administration established the facts of storage of property that is not taken into account in the accounting of KO “Municipalnaya Okhrana” and for the storage of which there are no relevant agreements and acceptance certificates. We are talking about things unnamed by the auditors, found in the warehouse of the organization on the street. Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya, 38 and indoors at 23 km of Borispol highway.
Also, the “auditors” became aware of the joint storage of inventory items of the Municipal Guard and the Kyiv city public formation for the protection of public order and the state border (GF) “Municipal Guard” without the possibility of proper identification and verification of such property – that is, the auditors do not were able to determine where whose things were. The Department of Internal Financial Control and Audit of the Kyiv City State Administration expressed the opinion that this “creates attractive conditions for manipulating quantitative and cost accounting data and actually existing and absent assets.”
At the same time, the auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration believe that the cooperation between the “Municipal Guard” and the “Municipal Guard” (it was secured by special memorandums concluded in 2020-2021. – KV) does not bring any financial or socio-economic effect to the communal organization. The “auditors” suggested that such cooperation is aimed at ensuring that the public formation uses the storage facilities of the utility organization free of charge. The auditors came to this conclusion due to the fact that for the period of 2021-2022 no other types of cooperation between the KO and the GF were established – obviously, we are talking at least about the fact that the results of such cooperation were not reflected in at least any documents.
In addition, the Department of Internal Financial Control and Audit of the Kyiv City State Administration believes that the process of formation by the “Municipal Guard” of the cost of security services is “risky and non-transparent” – the “auditors” found out that such prices are set by the management of the communal organization at its own discretion and in the absence of appropriate economically sound calculations. How much money KO “Municipalnaya Okhrana” could lose due to such a flaw in the management is not specified in the audit report. From the beginning of 2020 to the first half of 2022 inclusive, the organization received income for the provision of security services in the total amount of UAH 2.1 million.
Based on the results of these checks, the Department of Internal Financial Control and Audit of the KSCA provided 20 recommendations to the Municipal Guard to eliminate the identified violations, of which the majority – 16 recommendations – were fully taken into account by the organization’s management. Interestingly, the auditors of the Kyiv City State Administration did not demand the return of “overpaid salaries” from the “Municipal Guard”. In this case, the communal organization was provided with recommendations on bringing the size of official salaries of employees in accordance with regulatory legal acts and holding a meeting with responsible employees regarding compliance with legislation on wages. And such comments were taken into account.
What does Municipal Security do?
Recall that the City Council created the “Municipal Guard” in September 2017 – then it had the organizational and legal form of a communal enterprise (KP). At that time, individual deputies of the City Council actively opposed its creation. In particular, they did not agree that it would be necessary to spend taxpayers’ funds on the structure of such a profile, because the KSCA did not provide the people’s deputies with a financial plan for this CP.
Also, some deputies of the Kyiv City Council and public activists suggested that the “Municipal Guard” is nothing more than a business project or the mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko, or one of his deputies, the main a task which – the suppression of protests near the mayor’s office and the reprisals against especially active opponents of the city. authorities. Such arguments and accusations had no result. Later, in April 2021, the city council reorganized the “Municipal Guard, turning it into a communal organization — the city leadership explained such a reform by the need to “harmonize” the activities of this structure with budget and antimonopoly legislation.
According to the Regulations on the KO “Municipal Okhrana”, the subject of its activity is the protection of communal property objects of the territorial community of Kyiv (according to the audit report, during 2021 this KO guarded 232 communal facilities, including 170 educational institutions and culture), the provision of services for protection of individuals and property of legal entities and individuals, provision of services for the installation, maintenance, repair and regulation of mechanical and electronic protective devices, safes and security structures for monitoring and remote monitoring
At the same time, the activities of this organization are regularly accompanied by scandals – both because of possible facts of corruption and because of the dubious behavior of individual employees of the Municipal Guard.
So, in May 2021, the prosecutor’s office of Kyiv informedthat the management of the “Municipal Guard” carried out the procedure for the procurement of services for the professional training of security guards for more than half a million hryvnias without actually providing these services. And in October of the same year in the Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office toldthat the leadership of the “Municipal Okhrana” in 2019-2020 probably caused damage to the city budget of Kyiv in the amount of more than 4.7 million hryvnias when purchasing uniforms and accessories at an inflated cost. Within the framework of these two criminal proceedings, two members of the Municipal Okhrana KO received suspicions from law enforcement officers of misappropriation of budgetary funds – in the first case, information about the name of the suspect is not available in open sources, and according to the second fact, it is known that Igor Mari was in the epicenter of attention of law enforcement officers.
Another high-profile incident occurred in November 2021. Then the deputy of the Kyiv City Council Vladislav Trubitsyn (the Servant of the People faction) appealed to the Kyiv City State Administration and law enforcement officers with a demand verify information about the beating of a man by employees of the “Municipal Guard”. They say that in one of the capital’s parks they detained a citizen who was administering a natural need in a place not designated for this, after which they allegedly beat him with a rubber stick and accurately sprayed tear gas in his face. But in the future, this scandal was brought to naught: the KSCA reported that the employees of the organization were forced to resort to physical influence on the violator using special means, because this citizen was the first to attack them.
In January 2022, several community activists reportedthat the probable former separatist Willy Perehodenko, who fought against the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2015, served in the ranks of the Municipal Okhrana KO. Information about him was published by the employees of the communal organization themselves, indignant that they had to work together with the terrorist. In response, the Deputy Chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration on the implementation of self-governing powers Andrey Krishchenko sent an appeal to the Security Service of Ukraine to verify the information.
As a reminder, since December 13, 2021, the Municipal Guard is heading Sergey Chernyshev. His predecessors in this position were Alexander Katsubo (from October 20, 2017 to June 25, 2020), Igor Mari (from June 26, 2020 to February 2, 2021, one of the co-founders and current head of the Municipal Guard Fund mentioned above), Andrey Nikita (since February 3, 2021 to March 24, 2021), Yuri Omelya (from March 25, 2021 to May 30, 2021). Prior to the appointment of Chernyshev, during the “transformation” of this CP into a KO, the corresponding reorganization commission was headed by the same Igor Mari.
The specified organization in its activities is subordinate to the Department of Municipal Security of the KSCA (until 2020 – the Department of Civil Protection of the KSCA), which since December 12, 2018 is headed Roman Tkachuk (on the collage). Since November 2021, the activities of this structure have been controlled by the Deputy Chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration on the implementation of self-governing powers, the former head of the Main Directorate of the National Police of Kyiv (2015-2020) Andrey Krishchenko. The latter at one time was already the direct head of the current head of the Municipal Okhrana CO: in 2014-2015, Chernyshev headed the Nikitovsky district police department of the city of Gorlovka (Donetsk region), and Krishchenko then led the Gorlovka city administration.
Ivan Kulik, translation Skeleton.Info
