How Ruvin’s entourage "hacked" Prozorro

How Ruvin’s entourage "hacked" Prozorro

This year, a company called “Modern Transport Infrastructure” emerged on the road horizon, founded by the close associates of the head of the Kyiv Institute of Forensic Expertise, Oleksandr Ruvin, who received contracts worth over 300 million UAH without having “cleanly” won almost any tenders.

In September, several anti-records were set in Prozorro. The municipal enterprise for road maintenance and repair of roads and structures of the Sviatoshynskyi district of Kyiv signed a contract for the repair of Symyrenko Street. The unique feature of this road tender, with an expected cost of 19 million UAH, was that 13 participants submitted applications to participate. However, the customer rejected 10 of them, and the contract ultimately went to LLC “Modern Transport Infrastructure.”

This company is the direct author of the second anti-record. Since May 2020, it has collected about a dozen contracts worth over 300 million UAH, mostly obtained from the hands of the Department of Regional Development of the Kyiv Regional State Administration and the architecture and road construction departments of several districts in Kyiv. At the same time, as “OLIGARCH” found out, the company did not “cleanly” win almost any tenders. Victories were achieved after the disqualification of cheaper competitors.

For instance, in the largest tender of 101 million UAH this summer, the customer - the Department of Regional Development of the Kyiv Regional State Administration - rejected three competitors whose bids started from 65 million UAH, choosing the most expensive offer from “Modern Transport Infrastructure” (“MTI”). In another large tender, the customer rejected three cheaper competitors (their proposals started at 48 million UAH) in favor of “MTI” with 57.5 million UAH. In the third tender, two competitors were removed (contract worth 34.7 million UAH), and in another one, one competitor was eliminated, and the contract for 35.2 million UAH went to “MTI.”

In most cases, customers rejected competitors with names like the Turkish “ONUR,” “Rostdorstroy,” or PE “Avtomagistral,” who have hundreds of won tenders and road contracts worth billions of hryvnias. The State Audit Service several times directly recognized the disqualification of competitors as unlawful, as well as the admission of “MTI” itself to the bidding.

“The company did not provide lease agreements for the industrial site for the entire duration of the contract in 2020-2021,” reads a competitor’s complaint to the AMCU on one of the tenders, where the customer disqualified them for minor violations such as “Onur,” who “did not provide a market price analysis for building materials.”

Or “Avtomagistral,” which was rejected for providing a certificate of having one engineer-surveyor instead of two, although, as the AMCU established, there was a second one, which the customer simply did not see due to a footnote under the document.

Often, the same customers concluded direct contracts with “MTI” for small subthreshold amounts, bypassing competitive bidding.

In the photo – Oleksandr Ruvin

What explains such reverent attitude towards the company and dislike for its competitors? The answer to this question may be hinted at by the composition of the founders of “Modern Transport Infrastructure.” 20% of the capital is recorded in the name of Oleksandr Prystupov, and 80% in the name of Valeriy Syrovatskyi.

The latter once ran for the Verkhovna Rada as a majoritarian candidate with a district in the center of Irpin, but he is better known as a business partner of LLC “International Courier Service” (courier delivery through Boryspil Airport) of Halyna Ruvina. This is the wife of Oleksandr Ruvin - the head of the Kyiv Institute of Forensic Expertise in the Ministry of Justice sphere.

Journalists once captured him having lunch in a restaurant with the head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court Pavlo Vovk and former MP from the BPP Oleksandr Hranovskyi. The organization headed by Ruvin is dependent on criminal proceedings, such as those being investigated by NABU for billions of hryvnias and the potential imprisonment (or not) of top-level corruptionists.

Court materials on the case of the failed assassination attempt on Ruvin in 2015 state that the explosives were planted in the car of the co-founder of “International Courier Service” (referring to Syrovatskyi - “OLIGARCH”), who is indicated as a “close acquaintance of Ruvin.” Now this “close acquaintance” is mastering millions in road construction, which are being surrendered to him without a fight and competitiveness by budget organizations.