"In April, Kyiv City Children's Clinical Hospital No. 2 of the Kyiv City Council ordered medical furniture from Ukrprotez LLC for UAH 26.38 million. The largest amount - UAH 10.01 million, or 38% of the order - was for bedside tables with a folding table for food. The supplier offered the Turkish-made C-EY-02/m model by Medical 2000 for UAH 37,080, or $937 per unit, according to the Nashi Hroshi article.
In September 2023, the Department of Health of the Kyiv City State Administration ordered the same tables from Unimed Group LLC, but for UAH 25,429, or $695. That is, the dollar price has risen by 26% in six months.
"If the children's hospital had ordered the cabinets at last year's dollar price of the Kyiv City State Administration, it would have spent $188,000. That is, the savings on the cabinets alone could have amounted to UAH 2.58 million," the journalists said.
Some other furniture also went up in price compared to other tenders in 2023-2024. The journalists claim that Ukrprotez received the order without competition, as no one else applied for the tender. This is the first time this company has received an order.
According to the YouControl system, Ukrprotez was founded in May 2021 by Vasyl Bezzubenko from Kyiv Region and Stanislav Tarasevych from Kyiv, and Vladyslav Royko was the director at the time. However, in February 2022, Vasyl Bezzubenko's share was transferred to the Kyiv-based Unilex Law Firm LLC owned by Yuliya Bezzubenko and Mykola Shchyruk. Ivan Kolochko has recently become Ukrprotez's director.
Unilex also owns Unimed Group, the company from which the furniture was purchased last year.
" Yuliya Bezzubenko is the wife of Mykola Bezzubenko, the former head of the SBU's economic protection department. From 2020 to at least 2021, he was a freelance adviser to the head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, but in the autumn of 2023, he was no longer on the list of advisers. As Nashi Hroshi previously reported, Mykola Bezzubenko was previously known as a kickback collector from medical equipment suppliers for the then head of economic counterintelligence, Serhiy Semochko," the journalists say.
In 2021, Mykola Bezzubenko defended his PhD thesis on tax evasion. His supervisor was Oleh Tatarov, Deputy Head of the Presidential Office.