In Transcarpathia, a contractor was ordered to return 6.5 million UAH to the budget for road repair work.

The Economic Court of the Transcarpathian region declared the contract between the executive committee of the Khust City Council and LLC "Khust Megabud" invalid. Due to violations of competitive conditions, the contractor is required to return 6.5 million UAH to the budget, which was received for road repairs.

As reported by the Transcarpathian regional prosecutor's office on February 4, during the tender process, both participants acted contrary to the requirements of legislation on the protection of economic competition to obtain the most favorable conditions for themselves.

"Prosecutors proved that the entrepreneurs coordinated their actions and, without the knowledge of the customer, determined the future winner among themselves. As a result, the auction results were distorted, and state funds amounting to approximately 6.5 million UAH were received by a pre-determined company", the law enforcement officials stated.

According to information from Prozorro, the tender for the major repair of the road on Oleksiy Borkanyuk Street was conducted by the Khust City Council's executive committee in 2018. During the bidding, LLC "Khust Megabud" made an offer that was 9,000 UAH lower than that of LLC "KhustBud," thus winning the procurement worth 6.5 million UAH.

During the consideration of the case, the court noted that the participants submitted their tender proposals from a single automated electronic platform and sent reports to the Khust State Tax Inspectorate from the same IP addresses, while their email addresses were identical except for one digit. Additionally, LLC "Khust Megabud" and LLC "KhustBud" made the same mistakes and formatted their tender proposal documents identically.

The Economic Court of the Transcarpathian region declared the contract between the executive committee of the Khust City Council and LLC "Khust Megabud" invalid and ordered the company to return 6.5 million UAH, received for road repairs, to the budget.

According to data from the analytical portal Youcontrol, the company "Khust Megabud," with a charter capital of 200,000 UAH, was registered in Khust in June 2017 by Vasyl Zabolotny. Since then, the enterprise has won state tenders totaling 16 million UAH, the largest of which – 13 million UAH – was in 2018. At that time, the Khust City Council was headed by Volodymyr Kashchuk, who was suspended from office in 2024.