Following yesterday's court decision in favor of the State Logistics Operator, which dismissed the claims of one of the companies that had bid to supply food to the Armed Forces for 12 of the 13 lots, other suppliers have withdrawn their offers. The state-owned enterprise considers such actions to be coordinated and openly calls them pressure. This position was voiced by Arsen Zhumadilov, Director General of the State Operator of the Logistics, during today's briefing, UNN journalist reports.
Arsen Zhumadilov reminded that the tender was re-announced because there was a court decision before that, according to which the State Enterprise was forced to make changes to the tender documents.
"Today we have the disclosure of the procurement procedure that was announced several weeks ago, it was announced again because there was a decision of the 6th Administrative Court of Appeal that obliged us to fulfill the claims related to the tender documentation. We have re-announced it, and as of yesterday we expected that today, when the procedure opens, we will have competition for all 13 lots within this procedure. The relevant auctions have been scheduled," Zhumadilov said.
However, according to him, after yesterday's ruling by the Kyiv District Administrative Court in favor of the State Enterprise, most of the suppliers who had applied to participate in the tenders withdrew their proposals. The state-owned enterprise believes that this was done deliberately and in a coordinated manner by the suppliers in order to return to the old procurement scheme.
"Yesterday, an important event happened for those suppliers who hoped that they would receive exactly the contracts they wanted, namely, yesterday the court did not satisfy the claim of one of the suppliers and then, in a rather interesting way, as we understand it, in a coordinated manner, for a significant number of lots - for 12 out of 13 such suppliers withdrew their offers. And today we realize that when the procedure is opened for most lots, we will not have any offers that we can accept for qualification.
This means that there are attempts to put us in a situation - we, primarily the DOT, and also to put some pressure on the MoD - where a configuration will be formed in which it will look logical to transfer this procurement back to the MoD structural unit that has been conducting these procurements in recent years, or to extend their current contracts.
We understand that this will mean curtailing an important reform, which, let me remind you, consists of having a separate central executive body that forms policy, and a separate institution that conducts procurement," Zhumadilov added.
Recall
The Kyiv District Administrative Court dismissed a lawsuit challenging the requirements set forth in a draft contract for the purchase of food for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In particular, the plaintiff challenged the requirements regarding the obligation of suppliers to register tax invoices in a timely manner and to provide the customer with the opportunity to check the storage conditions of food to be supplied to the military.
Context
Earlier, the Board of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal, following a lawsuit filed by Trade Granit Invest, canceled the condition prohibiting the participation in tenders of suppliers who failed to fulfill their obligations to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine in 2022-2023.
Because of this, the State Logistics Operator was forced to cancel 11 tenders.
The company Trade Granite Invest is most likely involved in a powerful information attack on the new team of the Ministry of Defense and the DOT, which could be led by the traitor of Ukraine Viktor Medvedchuk.