President urged to reject law fuelling corruption with public procurement
TORO, the contact group for Transparency International in Ukraine has called on the President to refuse to sign a law allowing corruption with tenders. .
The appeal states that on 4 July the parliamentary majority passed draft Law № 9634 “On Amendments to Some Legislative Acts on Public Procurement”.
The draft law envisages the exclusion from the Public Procurement Act of tenders for State or municipal enterprises or enterprises where over 50 percent is owned by the State or municipal authority, where the procurement is carried out at the expense of the specific enterprise
It also broadens the list of procurements which can be carried out outside the framework of the Public Procurement Act. This now includes the purchase or leasing of land, buildings, other real estate or property rights to land, buildings or other real estate.
The law waives tender procedure for a considerable amount of public procurement and allows information to not be divulged about such procurement.
Transparency International, represented in Ukraine by TORO, believes that the entry into force of this law would result in public scrutiny over procurement by the said enterprises being rendered virtually impossible. Ukrainian citizens will be deprived of free and unimpeded access to information about their procurement. This is despite the fact that according to current legislation on carrying out public procurement information about procurement by the said enterprises is freely available on the official website on state procurement. “’
The appeal points out that the State Financial Inspectorate, the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine, the Security Service and other bodies regularly report that they have uncovered irregularities by industrial enterprises when carrying out purchases. After the draft law is finally passed, there will be no possibility of properly monitoring procurement by state enterprises, which will mean that the spending of approximately 200 billion UAH ends up away from the public eye.
They believe that the adoption of Draft Law No. 9634 is about getting in the good books of corrupt managements in charge of State enterprises as the parliamentary elections approach. It also creates a real risk that the money from corrupt procurement will be used for illegal financing of the election campaign of the parliamentary majority.