Serhiy Kuzminykh, head of the subcommittee on pharmacy and pharmaceutical activities of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on National Health, Medical Aid, and Medical Insurance, is actively building a public image of a reformer who allegedly fights for lower drug prices and the protection of patients' rights. However, behind this facade lie facts of lobbying for large pharmaceutical companies, attempts at illegal influence, and political flexibility in the interests of oligarchic business, UNN writes.
A deputy who has repeatedly changed political orientations
Kuzminykh is from Zhytomyr region. In 2015, he created the "International Fund of the Kuzminykh Brothers", and since 2017, he became a co-founder of rehabilitation centers for veterans in Zhytomyr, Cherkasy, and Kyiv. This fund was founded by him together with his brother Oleh Kuzminykh, a well-known veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, a "cyborg" who went through Russian captivity.
Thanks to his brother's heroism and reputation, Serhiy Kuzminykh was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 2019 as a non-partisan. In 2014–2019, Kuzminykh supported the team of the fifth president Petro Poroshenko. However, with the change of power, the political course of the MP also changed. After Volodymyr Zelenskyy's victory in the presidential elections, Kuzminykh quickly reoriented himself to the new team and joined the pro-presidential faction of the "Servant of the People" mono-majority. A pragmatic interest in personal political gain is obvious.
Ties with "Darnytsia" and conflict of interest
Even before becoming a deputy, Serhiy Kuzminykh had active ties with pharmaceutical companies. In particular, the charitable organization "Zagoria Family Foundation", founded by the owners of the "Darnytsia" pharmaceutical plant Kateryna and Hlib Zagoria, provided over UAH 9.5 million to the Kuzminykh brothers' fund in 2016–2018. That is, even before his parliamentary career, Kuzminykh received support from representatives of large pharmaceutical businesses. At that time, Kuzminykh worked as a member of the Ministry of Health commission, which was engaged in terminating the validity of registration certificates, and it is not difficult to guess what such generosity of the Zagoria family was related to.
This fact even became the subject of consideration by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP). According to Serhiy Derkach, head of the NACP department, there is a potential conflict of interest in the actions of one of the members of the Ministry of Health commission, who has his own fund and received money from the owner of a pharmaceutical giant.
The study published on the NACP website stated that individual members of the Ministry of Health commissions acted in favor of certain pharmaceutical companies and deprived other drug manufacturers of registration certificates, thereby effectively eliminating competitors. As an example of the dishonesty of the Ministry of Health commission members, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention cited the financing of the Kuzminykh brothers' fund by the Zagoria fund.
Market redistribution and competition elimination plan
As sources close to the Zagoria family told UNN, in early summer 2024, the owners of "Darnytsia" company came up with a new plan for market redistribution and ensuring a monopoly position. Its essence was to displace small manufacturers from the market, eliminate large distributors, and shift responsibility for high drug prices to pharmacies.
It would have been impossible to implement this plan without support in parliament. That is why, according to sources, the Zagorias decided to turn to Serhiy Kuzminykh, who already had experience working in the Ministry of Health, headed the subcommittee on pharmacy in the relevant committee, and was well known to the Zagoria family. In addition, Kuzminykh already had a criminal case for bribery hanging over him, so, obviously, the MP had no moral barriers to participating in backroom deals.
The first stage of the plan's implementation was the initiative to completely ban marketing agreements between pharmacies and drug manufacturers. This step was presented in the public space as a fight against the pharmacy mafia and "markups" on prices.
Involved media, political allies, and individual activists promoted the thesis that marketing payments to pharmacies were allegedly the main reason for high prices. Representatives of the pharmaceutical plant, for their part, supported the narratives, insisting that they were forced to include huge sums in the price of the drug, which they pay to pharmacies for promotion, and the financial burden ultimately allegedly falls on the patient.
However, they kept silent about something else: marketing is a legal mechanism for promoting products on the market, and its cancellation does not guarantee a reduction in drug prices. As a result of public pressure, the Ministry of Health was forced to admit that the marketing ban did not lead to a reduction in drug prices, despite the promises of its initiators. Manufacturers, including "Darnytsia", reduced prices only for a few items in their assortment of medicines, forming a so-called TOP-100 list, which has nothing to do with marketing. In other cases, prices either remained at the same level as before the artificial increase in November-January, or began to rise.
Meanwhile, this led to an increase in "Darnytsia's" monthly actual profit by UAH 500 million per month. However, Serhiy Kuzminykh, of course, does not mention these facts while obviously fulfilling "Darnytsia's" tasks.
Kuzminykh does not stop and continues to promote the interests of "Darnytsia"
Kuzminykh probably promised a quick result to the customer, because after the market participants managed to convince the authorities that the pharmaceutical market would not be able to function normally without marketing, the MP moved on to more active public promotion of "Darnytsia's" narratives and, probably, not without stimulation from the customers.
In addition to actively supporting the interests of the pharmaceutical giant on social networks and in loyal media associated with the Zagoria family, Kuzminykh participates in closed meetings with representatives of the pharmaceutical market, where, according to the participants of the consultations, he proposes regulatory models that will ensure profits exclusively for large factories. All his proposals, as UNN interlocutors say, somehow involve maintaining a favorable position for, first of all, "Darnytsia".
So, despite his formal affiliation with the committee, he actually acts as a mouthpiece for the interests of a particular oligarch, fulfilling the tasks assigned to him.
All this indicates a systemic pattern of behavior that has all the signs of attempts at illegal abuse of influence and open lobbying. In Kuzminykh's case, he obviously agreed to the Zagorias' proposal and promised to influence once again for the adoption of the necessary decisions.
Given his long-standing close ties with the owners of the "Darnytsia" pharmaceutical company, his participation in promoting favorable regulatory decisions for it, and obvious agreements, state bodies, in particular the State Bureau of Investigation, should assess the actions of Serhiy Kuzminykh not only as a politician, but as an official who has influence on a critically important industry — pharmaceuticals.
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