Public tenders

Tender is the purchase by a customer of goods, works and services in accordance with the procedure established by the Law of Ukraine “On Public Procurement”.

In fact, tender is how public authorities and their structural units ensure the functioning of the state. This means that when budgetary institutions order road repairs or food for the military, they are making tender.

And although today’s online resources like Prozorro help to open up the tenders process to the maximum extent possible and ensure its transparency, corrupt officials still manage to disguise themselves and circumvent the “difficulties” in procurement.

Thus, despite the obvious, multi-billion dollar successes of anti-corruption activists, schemes in tenders still exist. The list of such frauds includes:

• Winning by related companies: legal entities or individual entrepreneurs are owned either by the same person or by close relatives, members of the same family, etc.
• Victory of fictitious companies: when a fictitious company that has no employees or equipment, registered at the address of mass registration, wins.
• Use of sparring partners: tenderers who are not real competitors agree with each other to determine the future winner.
• Manipulation of estimates: setting the price of goods/services higher than the market price, entering into additional agreements after the contract is signed, which gradually increase the cost and reduce the scope of work.