A Thief with an American Passport – 2

This story is about the scheme for 20 million UAH embezzled by Suprun’s husband Marko through the public organization ‘PATRIOT DEFENCE’ that had been headed by him since July 2016. The money was stolen under the guise of payments for training and advanced training of medical staff.

Initially, money from the Ministry of Health was allocated to I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University and then taken out through the public organization of Suprun.

The scheme has been under realization since October 2017.

For this purpose, Mikhaylo Korda, rector of the State Higher Educational Institution ‘I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, sent an offer to Ukraine’s Ministry of Health to consider allocation of funds in the amount of 3.3mln UAH in the 4th quarter of 2017 under the program for ‘Professional and Refresher Training of Individuals Providing First Medical Aid’. He also asked to allocate funds in the amount of 6.5mln UAH for the year of 2018 (KEKV 3110 budget expenditures classification code ‘Purchase of Equipment and Durable Items’). For the budget funds to be sent to the medical university, it was necessary to make changes to paragraph 5 ‘The procedure of using funds budgeted by the state for training of qualified first-aid personnel’.

The following expense items were offered by Mr. Korda to be included to the aforementioned paragraph by the Ministry of Health:

· course educational services (for the budgeted training program), in particular, to ensure remunerations and services of instructors, including foreign ones, the coordinator and head of the course; accounting and economic services of translators and assistant instructors and accruals for the personnel employed; · purchase of items, consumables, textbooks and equipment for training courses, payment for translation services and publishing of literature; · payment of accommodation services and meals for course participants, utilities and other services necessary for the course to be conducted. The university planned to spend 6.5mln UAH on necessary equipment, mannequins and dummies.

Mykhaylo Korda printed three annexes of expenditures attached to that letter:

1. Calculation of total labor costs, created by the course, equaled 1.075 million UAH. 236k UAH had to be allocated as payroll (KEKV code 2111, 2120). The project manager’s salary reached 130k UAH per month and the course coordinator received 26k UAH of monthly salary, while the accountant and financier received only 6.5k UAH per month. 2. Calculation of total cost of items, materials, equipment and inventory (code 2210) equaled 1.15mln UAH. The list included costs of medicines, uniforms and documents. Purchase of gasoline (1920 liters) and diesel (1240 liters) was rather pricy too. 3. Calculation of the expenditures for services (except utilities) (KEKV code 2240) equaled 502.3k UAH including food and accommodation. Minister Ulyana Suprun personally started to deal with this one of the most important issue in the medical area.

To ensure transfer of money to I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University of Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, Minister Ulyana Suprun prepared a special letter in October 2017.

The letter was intended for the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine, the State Audit Service of Ukraine and the State Treasury Service of Ukraine. The purpose of the letter was adoption of the draft resolution by the Cabinet of Ministers ‘On Approval of the Procedure for Using Funds Provided in the State Budget for Professional and Refresher Training of Individuals Providing First Medical Aid’.

Suprun enclosed an explanatory note to the letter, as well as the procedure for the use of funds describing the grounds and the need for the resolution to be adopted. The primary objective of that project was to conduct training courses in the areas of ‘Paramedicine’, ‘Basic Life Support” and ‘Life Support during Trauma’, by adopting an appropriate governmental decision.

Lower level distributors of budgetary funds were I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and P. Shupyk National Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education since for that day, according to Suprun, those institutions had all the needed practical guidelines for training emergency medical personnel and the approved program ‘Life Support during Trauma’.

The resolution ‘On Approval of the Procedure for Using Funds Provided in the State Budget for ‘Professional and Refresher Training of Individuals Providing First Medical Aid’ of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine was signed by Prime-Minister Groysman on December 27, 2017. And this all is against the background of the fact that at that moment medical institutions lacked funding and, as a result, doctors were dismissed as part of ‘Suprun’s Reform’. Why did Suprun need to allocate 20mln UAH to the University of Ternopil and the Academy of Postgraduate Education?

In 2017 the public organization ‘Patriot Defense’ conducted the course ‘Life Support during Trauma. Ukrainian Program’ exactly on the basis of Ternopil University Hospital. The media reported that the program lasted only 6 days in October 2017. Apparently, Mr. Korda asked Suprun to allocate as much as 3.3mln UAH only for this program.

Husband of the Minister of Health Marko Suprun heads the Public Organization ‘Patriot Defense’ that was formerly led by Ulyana Suprun herself.

It’s obvious that the public organization is used for cashing out money since the cost of services it is part of is multiple times overrated and the function of Suprun is just to distribute money flows to the right educational establishments.