Due to court ruling in favor of company that disrupts food tenders for the Armed Forces, DOT is forced to cancel 11 auctions: details

"The State Logistics Operator is forced to cancel 11 tenders for the supply of food for the Ukrainian army due to the decision of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal, which satisfied the claims of Trade Granite Invest. This was reported by UNN with reference to DOT.

11 tenders totaling almost UAH 11 billion were held yesterday, February 21. However, due to a non-appealable court decision and after consulting with Prozorro, the State Logistics Operator decided to cancel them.

"While studying the legal mechanisms for implementing the decision of the Court of Appeal to satisfy the claims of Trade Granit Invest LLC, the DOT team, in particular, sought advice from Prozorro. At DOT's request, Prozorro clarified that, according to the Law, the customer can make changes to the procedures, but only up to the stage when they become "Auction". Since there is no technical and regulatory possibility to make changes at the auction stage, DOT decided to cancel all 11 procedures," the State Logistics Operator said on its social media page.

The DOT added that despite this, the supply of food for the Armed Forces of Ukraine will take place within the established time frame.

As previously noted by the state enterprise, Trade Granit Invest has repeatedly disrupted the supply of products to the army after winning tenders.

In its lawsuit, the firm demanded to cancel the tender conditions regarding the availability of evidence of disinfestation and deratization works at warehouses in 2023, the use of cash registers in at least 50% of the declared warehouses, and the right of the DOT to exclude companies that have not fulfilled their obligations under the tenders they won earlier.

It is very likely that Trade Granit Invest is behind the two-week long "dirty" media campaign against the new team of the Ministry of Defense and the State Logistics Operator.

On the eve of the court's decision, Arsen Zhumadilov told Cemaat.Live what the organizers of the information attack were trying to achieve.

"Their strategy is very clear, they are trying to put pressure publicly so that, in their understanding, I will go backwards in order to roll back the changes we are implementing now and leave the system to function as it has been functioning for the last years, even decades. But of course, this will not work.

There is a clear public demand for change, a public demand that food and supplies for the Armed Forces, on the one hand, and the word "corruption," on the other hand, never again be in the same sentence or phrase. That is, we must finally stop these stories that some unknown companies that were created yesterday, including by former employees of the Defense Ministry, win tenders in some non-transparent way," Zhumadilov said.

He also explained what the new tender conditions are aimed at.

"What we announced on February 2 is exactly our requirements. They are very clear and acceptable for real business, for real retail, that is, for real networks operating in Ukraine. They are, as we understand it, unaffordable for these companies that have recently appeared specifically for the contracts of the Ministry of Defense," added the DOT director general.

Context

After the State Logistics Operator announced the first tenders for the supply of food to the Armed Forces under the new rules, a "dirty" information campaign was launched against it and the new team of the Ministry of Defense, carried out by pseudo-experts who collaborated with the traitor Viktor Medvedchuk and other pro-Russian politicians.

In an exclusive commentary to UNN, political analyst Ihor Reiterovych expressed the opinionthat a large number of similarly negative reports about the Defense Ministry and the State Logistics Operator indicate a planned campaign to discredit them.

"It's clear that this is a planned campaign, because there are a lot of similar messages that relate to the activities of this particular SOE [State Operator of the Logistics]. They are similar. As a rule, they are based on the same information and were sent out quite purposefully through a network of tg-channels. I am more inclined to believe that these are some internal stories, just a struggle for influence, and an attempt to promote their people to take certain positions.

Of course, there is an option that the activists really drew attention to the violations they describe in such reports, but then the question is why there is no response from the Ministry of Defense to the appeals, including representatives of public councils and so on. Therefore, it seems to me that this is more like a reformatting of certain positions and an attempt to bring down one person in order to promote another," Reiterovych said.

Military expert Mykhailo Zhyrokhov is convinced that companies that have been supplying food to the armed forces since the days of fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych perceive any attempts to establish fair rules of the game in this area as a blow to their monopoly position. And to maintain their positions, they resort to various methods of pressure. 

"The fact is that procurement of food for the army has always been, let's say, potentially corrupt. And over time, a certain structure, a certain mafia, has formed there - companies that have been suppliers of food since the days of Yanukovych. And they perceive any changes in this market, changes for the better, as a blow to their monopoly, so they use, among other things, media injections. Multidirectional injections that undermine public confidence in this emerging structure (the State Logistics Operator - ed.). We need to look at who benefits from this. And it is definitely not beneficial to the army or society," Zhyrokhov said in an exclusive commentary to UNN.