Today, a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence was held to discuss the information published in the media about violations of the procurement procedure in the system of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and overpricing of food services for servicemen.
The meeting was attended by the MPs – the members of the Committee, members of other committees, representatives of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, NABU, SBI and SBU.
Summarizing the results of the meeting, Committee Chairman Oleksandr Zavitnevych said that after hearing the report of the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov, it became known that there were certain incorrect information in the information published by the media. In particular, the contract that was considiered at the meeting does not contain some price items mentioned in the journalistic investigation.
“First of all. The message that was spread in the media about the purchase of eggs, in particular, does not correspond to the figures in the contract that we have reviewed today. We have seen and studied the actual document, not the one in the information space. In addition, we have submitted this document to the competent authorities for review.
Second, of course, we will not say that there are no problems in the defense sector. The Committee is constantly monitoring the situation, hearing from those in charge and working on the problem together with colleagues from the Ministry of Defense and law enforcement agencies. Today’s meeting was attended by representatives of the NABU, the SSU and the SBI. In particular, in this case, and most importantly, even before the Committee’s meeting, the NABU opened a case to check the procurement of food supplies worth UAH 13 billion. A pre-trial investigation is already underway, including with other participants in this case. They are examining the contract, prices, etc. This means that not all the information made public is true,” emphasized Zavitnevych.
In addition, he emphasized that the situation with the publication of the material caused an urgent need for changes to the legislation, in particular to the Law on Defense Procurement.
“We will work on this, change the law, possibly to make certain parts of such procedures public. Currently, information is made public after the end of martial law plus 90 days. This example has shown that democratic control is valuable today, and therefore it is necessary to change some of the secrecy of defense procurement. We will decide how to implement this,” emphasized the Committee Chairman.
Following the meeting, the Committee discussed the need to initiate inspections and control of suppliers involved in providing the military with food supplies.
“These are young companies that may not quite meet the needs of such an important area, where it is necessary to have a serious material base and to predict certain risks, especially in times of war. And we will check this,” assured Zavitnevych.