On November 28, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced that the government was putting up for tender the manager of the arrested assets of the IDS Ukraine group of companies – the producer of mineral waters "Morshynska" and "Myrhorodska". ARMA set extremely short deadlines for submitting documents – until December 12, i.e., about two weeks. The auction is already scheduled for December this year, UNN reports with reference to Ukrainian News.
This decision caused a wave of criticism among experts and businesses, as the tender is launched literally a few weeks before the new ARMA law comes into force in January 2026, which significantly increases the requirements for transparency, asset valuation, and selection of managers.
According to analytics published by Mind, the announcement of the tender right now contains several legally critical points. First, the IDS asset has not yet been legally transferred to ARMA – the acceptance and transfer act, which should have been drawn up back in 2022 after the assets were seized, is missing. Second, the Agency does not have a lawsuit in the interests of the state, which is a mandatory condition for transferring assets to management.
Third, a full market valuation of the assets has not been carried out: only two companies in the group have been properly valued, while other positions are based on "market consultations," which does not comply with the law. And finally, the tender is launched under the old rules, although much stricter procedures for selecting managers will come into force in a few weeks.
Analysts note that holding a tender without an assessment and without proper registration of the asset transfer creates grounds for further challenging the results in court.
The financial aspect also raises questions. Although funds from the use of IDS corporate rights should go to the budget (at least UAH 24 million per month), former ARMA employee Andriy Potyomkin emphasizes in his blog: instead of full nationalization of assets, which would bring the state UAH 1.5 billion, the government is actually lobbying for a model that allows the manager to take about 30% of the profit – almost UAH 460 million.
The announcement of the tender took place against the backdrop of the high-profile "Midas" case, related to the possible withdrawal of tens of millions of dollars through "Energoatom" with the participation of businessman Timur Mindich – a long-time partner of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in "Kvartal 95".
The "Mindich tapes" published by the media contain conversations involving ARMA employees, which cast doubt on the Agency's independence and intensified discussions about the presence of corrupt influences.
Already on November 16 – virtually immediately after the scandal unfolded – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instructed the government to conduct a "complete renewal of ARMA," audit it, and review the procedures for managing arrested assets. Transparency International Ukraine indicated that the "Midas" scandal was one of the catalysts for urgent reform.
In previous years, media and analysts repeatedly noted that the then head of the President's Office, Andriy Yermak, sought to strengthen his influence on ARMA's personnel and operational decisions. In the public space, there were assumptions that the Agency could be part of a broader vertical of control over arrested assets.
Now, the IDS tender is publicly supported by Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, whom the same media and experts often described as an official from Yermak's orbit. Against this background, the current urgency of the tender is perceived not only as a management decision but also as a possible continuation of previously built influence mechanisms.
That is why the urgent and legally controversial decision regarding IDS looks to many not just like a technical step, but a signal about the possible preservation of the old informal architecture of influence in the management of arrested assets. In this interpretation, the tender appears not as a routine procedure, but as a marker that certain groups are trying to maintain access to resources until new legislation finally complicates this.
What's next? The transfer of IDS assets in an "emergency manner" even before the new law comes into force reinforces the assumption that the government seeks to consolidate key decisions before the rules of the game change, as long as the inertia of influence of structures associated with previous informal centers of power remains. In this perspective, the haste no longer looks like technicality, but an attempt to fix a management configuration that may not pass the transparency test after the ARMA reform. From a legal point of view, the procedure remains vulnerable, and from a political point of view, it becomes a test of whether the updated ARMA can truly break with the legacy of past practices.