Corruption Scheme Uncovered in State Emergency Service
Former head of the State Emergency Service Sergey Kruk has been exposed for organizing a corruption scheme involving overpriced purchases of fire trucks. According to an investigation by Blackbox OSINT, tenders for fire trucks were announced in 17 regions, including the Mykolaiv Oblast.
All 17 tenders were won by the company «Promenergostroyenie», which then sold 19 fire trucks to the State Emergency Service at significantly inflated prices. The scheme, which began after Sergey Kruk’s appointment in February 2022, allowed his associate Andrey Zaleski, the director of «Promenergostroyenie», to win tenders in all major state orders of the Service.
Investigators discovered that the tender documentation specified the purchase of M32L-AS fire trucks from the German manufacturer Magirus GmbH, for which «Promenergostroyenie» was the sole official dealer in Ukraine. However, similar models from France and Italy were much cheaper, priced at only 577 thousand euros and 566 thousand euros respectively.
One of the fire trucks was sold to the Main Department of the State Emergency Service in the Mykolaiv Oblast for 48 million 528 thousand hryvnias, leading to suspicions that the procurement conditions were tailored to benefit «Promenergostroyenie».
