Purchase of jackets for Armed Forces: Ukraine's Defence Minister offers wager to journalists Tkach and MP Radina, they respond

In response to the investigation of Ukrainska Pravda regarding the involvement of the nephew of a member of the Servant of the People party in the scandalous purchase of summer jackets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksii Reznikov, Defence Minister of Ukraine, pledged to resign if he does not prove that the jackets were indeed for winter.

Source: Reznikov in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda, UP journalist Mykhailo Tkach and MP Anastasia Radina on Facebook

Details: Earlier, investigative journalists reported that one of the Turkish companies received US$30 million from the Ministry of Defence for winter jackets for the Armed Forces but supplied the summer ones at a cost that had been inflated several times. 

On 25 August, Ukrainska Pravda published an investigation stating that one of the owners of this company was the nephew of a member of the presidential faction Servant of the People, who is a member of the parliamentary committee on national security, defence and intelligence.

After that, Anastasia Radina, the MP from the Servant of the People and the head of the anti-corruption committee, said that she would turn to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine because of this case.

Reznikov responded to the accusations by offering a wager to Tkach and Radina: if it turns out that the 180,000 coats delivered were indeed winter jackets and not summer ones, then Radina should resign and Tkach should leave the publication and stop his journalistic activity for three years.

However, he ignored the topic of the UP investigation into the involvement of the MP's nephew in the Turkish company.

The minister said that during the analysis of the situation, "he will provide all the documents, evidence, facts and materials related to the case, so that the winner of the dispute is obvious to the entire Ukrainian society."

Reznikov invited the parliamentary ethics committee of the Verkhovna Rada and the commission of journalistic ethics as "arbitrators" in this case, but did not explain why. 

Tkach replied that the minister should conclude not a wager but "procurement agreements at market prices and not with relatives of the Servant of the People."

Quote: "If you are ready to refute this fact, I, like the Ukrainian society, will listen to you carefully. But within a day of the release of the investigation, we never saw any explanation about this.

I do not know why, instead of explaining the participation of the nephew of the member of the defence committee in the procurement of the Ministry of Defence, you were forced to descend to a non-ministerial level of pressure on the media.

I will leave only when the last inside butcher of Ukrainian society, who thinks that he can use the power of society in his private interests with impunity, is backed into a corner. And the ideas of those who are on their way to this corner do not really bother me. Because that's my job.

Your job, which you do not seem to understand, is:

1. ensuring transparent purchases of those things that do not constitute a state secret, making it impossible for corrupt earnings during the war;
2. cooperating with law enforcement agencies in investigations regarding theft in your ministry;
3. fully supporting those that facilitate the first or second point."

Details: Radina also responded to the offer from the minister, supporting the wager.

Quote: "I propose to you, Mr Minister, to refute these accusations by 9:00 on Monday 28 August:

1. The Ministry of Defence procured jackets from a ‘Turkish’ intermediary company without a tender; at the time of the agreement with the Ministry of Defence, one of the owners of the company was a very much Ukrainian nephew of the member of the defence committee, Kasai. Even Mr Kasai himself did not deny the nephew's involvement in the company;
2. The Ministry of Defence paid for the jackets three times more expensively than indicated in the document on the Turkish side, with which the cargo left Türkiye and drove through the rest of the customs up to the border of Ukraine. The authenticity of the document was confirmed by Yaroslav Zhelezniak, the head of the temporary parliamentary commission of inquiry of economic crimes.

[Refute it - ed.] or resign.

If you manage to refute it, I will resign from my position immediately after the adoption of the law on the resumption of public declaration of the state of officials, including military commissars and would-be buyers for the army (you personally oppose the latter)."

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