Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk appealed to Deputy Minister of Economy Maksym Nefyodov, Minister of Defence of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak, the chairmen of the Interior Ministry, the Security Service and the SFS to take urgent action and to conduct transparent and open tender for the provision of catering for the military: "If there are proven facts of intentional delay or terminating tender procedures - criminal proceedings should be launched in relation of both the officials and the companies that want to disrupt the catering services for the Ukrainian Army and "follow through" a corrupt scheme," stressed the Head of Government at the Cabinet’s meeting on Wednesday, 2 March.

He reminded that, finally, the legislation on transparent and fair public procurement had been enacted: "The e-procurement system ProZorro has triggered operation all across the country".

Arseniy Yatsenyuk noted that among pioneers to join the ProZorro had been the Ministry of Defense: "The Defense Minister assumed responsibility and appealed to the Government to do the experiment" on electronic tenders for the supply of food for the Ukrainian military.

As a result, for the first time in history the winner of such tender became a company with the worldwide reputation – the Metro Group: "It has offered to supply the foodstuffs for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Lviv and in Odessa by 30% cheaper than the rest of bidding companies. Since we have ensured competition."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed that the Defence Ministry wants to conduct a fair and transparent tender for the provision of catering services for the Ukrainian Army. However, four companies “that in the past ten years have been on public procurement, overpriced and provided poor quality services to the Ukrainian soldiers", launched a campaign to disrupt the public and transparent bidding worth UAH 3.5 billion.

He underlined it is aimed to "prevent transparent and honest companies to participate in the tender, and to prolong ten-years contracts to provide catering for the Ukrainian soldiers, those contracts which were concluded without transparent procedures, without tenders": "They came to the conclusion and got to the Parliament with a goal to pass a law called to oblige the Defence Ministry to extend the contracts for catering services provided by the aforesaid companies."

The Prime Minister stressed that due to the position of the Parliament and the Committee on Economic Policy it had been rejected: "But now they are trying the different approach: they would intentionally "throw in" [a tender – ed.] dozens of companies linked to these corrupt companies, which till now are striving to provide catering services for the Ministry of Defense, want to disrupt the tender and to oblige the Ministry of Defence to extend the deals with the companies that have been draining for years the State Budget of Ukraine of money".

"It is a matter of national security and the image of the authorities. I won’t afford the companies that were supplying food to the Russian Black Sea fleet, to continue draining the State Budget of Ukraine of money and provision of poor quality and expensive catering for the Ukrainian Army", urged Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

The Prime Minister appealed to Deputy Minister of Economy Maksim Nefyodov, Minister of Defence of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Fiscal Service "to take urgent action and to conduct the transparent and open tender".

“If there are proven facts of intentional delay or terminating tender procedures, criminal proceedings should be launched in relation of both the officials and the companies that want to disrupt the catering services for the Ukrainian Army and "follow through" a corrupt scheme”, the Head of Government emphasized.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk added that he would have talks on this matter with the Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine: "I think that he will prolong fighting corruption the same way all our public authorities do, those engaged into struggle to prevent this corruption scheme".