High-profile corruption scandals in Ukrzaliznytsia and Ukroboronprom revealed to Ukrainians schemes through which billions of state hryvnia had been wasted for years. But scandalous revelations in the system of the Ministry of Health have long been waiting for their turn, where their tender mafia, covered by high-ranking officials and people’s deputies, has long been warming its hands on the purchase of equipment and medicines. Among them, the firms of the Fistal brothers, long associated with the odious Tatyana Bakhteeva, stand out. “Donetsk” continue to maraud in Ukraine today, and neither the Maidan nor the ATO prevented them from doing this.
Vladimir Fistal and German Fistal: how the Ukrainian healthcare budget is being stolen. PART 1
I would like to believe that the beginning of a new scandal was the investigation of the State Security Service of Ukraine, which revealed stunning corruption around the supply of hemodialysis machines and drugs, on which the lives of thousands of Ukrainians literally depend. All this was then outlined by journalists in a television story; several names of the embezzlers of budget funds were named and the amount of their profit was about 7 million hryvnia. It would seem like another victory over corruption worth celebrating, but…
Only 7 million hryvnia? The money is already too modest for those who, according to data Skelet.Infomakes a fortune of tens of millions of dollars (at least) from this. And why did the investigation cover only a couple of cases, name only a couple of names and companies, while keeping silent about the other participants in the shadow schemes and their patrons? So other journalists wondered whether this was an order from competing corrupt officials. And in the end, they reached out to the companies of the Fistal brothers, who have long become a real legend of shadow schemes in Ukrainian healthcare.
Medical dynasties of Donetsk
German and Vladimir Fistal are extremely non-public people – in open resources there is neither their biography, nor even a photo (except for random ones, in profile). This is quite understandable in this way of life and business, when it is not worthwhile to shine your name and face once again. And over the past few years, their “anonymity” (and not only them) has also been facilitated by the information self-blockade of Ukraine, which, under the pretext of “fighting enemy propaganda,” has cut off Ukrainians from many Internet resources in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) and the self-proclaimed “republics” of Donbass. It is very convenient for those who do not want anyone to find information about them in Yandex or on the DPR websites. Meanwhile, it all started in Donetsk – and something is still happening there.
The brothers owe their current position to two people, without whom they would now, at best, be selling plumbing fixtures at the market. The first is their father Emil Yakovlevich Fistal, a famous Donetsk doctor, surgeon and head of the burn center, considered one of the pillars of national medicine (at least, that’s how they “promoted” him). He was born on February 20, 1939 in Makeevek, into a family of Soviet intellectuals. He could have become a violinist, teacher or accountant, but his parents insisted that young Emil follow in the footsteps of his aunt and uncle and become a doctor. Although he entered the Donetsk Medical Center only the second time, Emil Fistal established himself as a skilled surgeon, specializing in severe burns – and built his entire career on this. Yes, he could have simply operated, remaining a humble doctor, but he preferred to operate and lead, and then lead and operate. And at the same time he taught at the same medical institute, where he met the lively student Tanechka – who married a few years later and became Tatyana Bakhteeva. However, given that Bakhteeva herself comes from a family of Donetsk doctors, it is possible that their acquaintance with Fistal occurred much earlier.
Emil Fistal
On February 16, 1964, while still a student, Emil Fistal had a son, Herman, and on January 2, 1971, when he was already working as a surgeon in a burn center, his second son, named Vladimir, was born. By the way, at Emil Fistal’s old address (Leninsky Prospekt, 139) in Donetsk his son Vladimir was registered, as well as a certain Nina Emilievna Fistal, born in 1998 – apparently his daughter from his second marriage. Well, one can only envy here!
German Emilievich and Vladimir Emilievich (I remember the “blue thief” Pasha Emilievich) did not show any talent in the field of medicine, and generally had no desire to treat people. Their childhood was far from poor, especially for the younger Vladimir; in their youth they also had enough of everything, but they constantly wanted more. During “perestroika” they opened some kind of cooperative, but they really started doing business only in the mid-90s. Journalists habitually associated this with the rise of Rinat Akhmetov’s group and the appointment of Viktor Yanukovych as governor of the Donetsk region, but not everything in Donetsk was built around Akhmetov. There were old and new clans in the region, and the Fistals belonged to the “Starodonetsk” (still the Soviet elite), among which they had all their connections.
Then Tatyana Bakhteeva appeared in their lives again – the second person to whom the Fistals owe their well-being. Bakhteeva is also always called one of the people closest to the Akhmetovs, however, not everything is so simple here. Bakhteeva was close to Zhigan Taktashev, who at one time was the right hand of Akhat Bragin (Alik the Greek) and in his way a competitor of Akhmetov. Bakhteeva became related to the Valitov family, also close to Taktashev – Andrei Adamovsky, a business partner of Alexander Granovsky, participated in their common business. Bakhteeva’s husband worked for raider Vladislav Dreger, associated with the well-known organized crime group “17th Precinct”. Finally, Bakhteeva was often seen in the company of Gennady Uzbek, another Donetsk “authority”.
And in 1997, Tatyana Bakhteeva became the general director of the Donetsk Regional Medical Association: all regional medicine came under her leadership. In the same year, German Fistal created the private enterprise PKF Donmed, through which he began to run his near-medical business, sharing his profit with Bakhteeva. The essence of this business has remained unchanged for 22 years: to “cut” the healthcare budget through the purchase of equipment, drugs and technology for medical institutions.
And it cannot be said that the venerable doctor Emil Fistal did not know how his stupid sons “earned money”. Of course he did! Moreover, according to sources Skelet.Infothey took their first steps in business with the help of their father’s burn center – purchasing medicines for him through their company and even opening a workshop for the production of some medical products from plastic. But the budget of the burn center was limited, but real prospects for the brothers unfolded when Tatyana Bakhteeva gave them access to the health care budget of the entire region, and then Ukraine. Moreover, Bakhteeva chose the Fistals as business partners for a reason, and not only because she had known their father for a long time. The name of the famous surgeon, the head of the center where the lives of hundreds of people were saved, was an excellent cover for all sorts of shadowy schemes!
Now this name is being used with might and main by the “DPR” separatists. In 2014, Emil Fistal remained working in Donetsk, refusing to leave his burn center and the Institute of Emergency Surgery, which is why even ended up in the infamous “Peacemaker” as a “supporter of terrorists.” On the one hand, one cannot blame the doctor for not abandoning the patients. On the contrary, we once admired the heroic Soviet doctors who in 1941 refused evacuation in order to stay with their patients. But on the other hand, Hitler did not award these doctors with Iron Crosses! But Emil Fistal received numerous awards in the DPR. And not only for the fact that he saved and treated the wounded residents of Donetsk, but at the same time the rebels (people too!). By the way, remember the “Buryat tankman” Dorji Batomunkueva, burned in the battles near Debaltsevo? He was treated at the Fistal burn center, where Joseph Kobzon visited him.
Emil Fistal, Joseph Kobzon and Dorzhi Batomunkuev
But does Emil Fistal really say what he thinks, or is he just habitually cozying up to power, regardless of the color of its flags? This idea is suggested by the fact that, taking advantage of his image as a “legend of Donetsk medicine” and the status of a “savior of people,” Emil Fistal, together with the companies of his son Herman, is actively “cutting up” the now healthcare budget of the “Donetsk Republic”, and also mastering humanitarian aid From Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). And you yourself understand that access to such a trough is given only for certain “merits”.
Rats in white coats
The Fistal brothers tried to make their first business by producing disposable syringes, which they planned to sell to their father’s medical institutions. But even then, in the 90s, the Fistals realized that producing their own products is not very profitable and much more difficult than reselling someone else’s – sometimes passing it off as their own. Since then, this has become one of the features of their business. For example, in 2017, the Kyiv City State Administration held a tender for the supply and installation of 118 lifting platforms for wheelchair users, allocating 10 million hryvnia for this. The competition was won by the Ortoimpex company (founder Yuri Vasilenko, one of the Fistals’ people), offering its services for 9.98 million. At first glance, everything is honest and transparent. But then it turned out that Ortoimpex would purchase these platforms from Dispomed Production Company LLC (EDRPOU 32250962), owned by the Fistal brothers. Then it turned out that Dispomed does not produce these platforms itself. Moreover, although Dispomed has been operating since 2003, it does not even independently produce wheelchairs, which it sells on its own behalf. There are even doubts that they even produce crutches there. No, all this is purchased from other enterprises, at best assembled from components, at worst simply resold at a profit.
But there was something else, unfortunately, not noticed by journalists. If you look at the information about the tenders that Fistal companies have won and are winning, you can find one interesting detail. They always offer a price slightly lower than the competitive price, as if they were honestly winning tenders – and there seems to be nothing to complain about. But at the same time, they still make 20-50%, selling equipment and medicines much more expensive than their real price. By the way, we say real, not market, because the Ukrainian market of medical equipment and medicines is partially monopolized and divided between shadow clans that deliberately inflate prices and do not allow fair competition. But the real price is the cost of similar goods and services in other countries (one might say, world prices), from where, by the way, most of the equipment is imported, which is then resold at tenders.
So, in the case of the lifts ordered by the Kyiv City State Administration, the cost of each, even with installation, was 84.6 thousand hryvnia. Experts pointed out that it was greatly overestimated: for that kind of money in Europe you can buy a small electric car! But this price was set by the customer (KSCA), and the Fistale company even made a symbolic discount. The same can be seen in most tenders in the Ukrainian healthcare system, and not only in those where Fistal participated: it was the customers who inflated the price. But at the same time, the tenders were invariably won by their own, “necessary” companies. That is, in this case, a shadow tender scheme of the system of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection is revealed, when the budget is actually stolen by the chief doctors and officials themselves, but in conjunction with their companies (or the companies of their reliable partners). In this case, the final word belongs to those who allocate money from the budget for this, signing a specific amount. You can call it “Bakhteeva’s scheme”, since at one time she was one of its authors, she managed the flow of healthcare budgets, and she still uses this scheme. And yet we should not forget that according to this scheme, even without Bakhteeva, the heads of medical institutions, including the “legend” Emil Fistal, lined their pockets for years. Or do you think he was out of touch by signing inflated invoices?
Oh yes, all these commercial doctors like to hide behind their regalia and image as the savior of people, but still think about this: due to the fact that equipment and drugs are purchased at inflated prices, medical services – operations, intensive care – cost much more , treatment, rehabilitation. For which these same doctors took money from Ukrainians, lamenting that budget funding was not enough even for brilliant green. Of course it’s “not enough”, because it was stolen by these rats in white coats! Now let’s think about how many Ukrainians died because they did not have money for these expensive operations and treatment, because the long line of “beneficiaries” did not reach them. How many graves of the poor are there per one person pulled out of the other world by heroic doctors who divided half the cost of treatment among themselves, corrupt bureaucrats and commercial firms? It seems that this issue is no longer only of corruption, but also of a political nature.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
CONTINUED: Fistal Vladimir and Fistal German: how the healthcare budget of Ukraine is being stolen. PART 2
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