Schemes that do not burn: how corrupt officials from the State Emergency Service "whitewash" gas station owners

The State Emergency Service has a very interesting division in its composition: the Department for the Prevention of Emergency Situations, whose head Oleksandr Mykolayovych Chekrygin simultaneously holds the position of the Chief State Fire Inspector of Ukraine.

Although any inspections are prohibited during the war, Oleksandr Mykolayovych is feeling quite well, because hundreds of thousands of dollars are getting into the official's pockets thanks to the "blackmail" of Ukrainian gas stations.

About schemes to enrich officials of the State Emergency Service at the expense of gas station chain owners in the material 360UA.NEWS

Oleksandr Cherkrygin came up with a simple scheme to "whitewash" the owners of Ukrainian gas station networks: to demand a bribe for each gas station when identifying high-risk objects. In September 2022, Resolution No. 1030 of the CMU was adopted, according to the provisions of which, all high-risk and potentially dangerous objects must undergo re-identification. Whether the property is classified as "high risk" depends on whether the owner needs to enter into contracts for emergency service and insurance. That is, the benefit is on the surface.

The identification process is quite complicated and requires calculations. And also, as practice has shown, this process "requires a bribe" to Oleksandr Mykolayovych. Thus, according to the data of the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, the Zhytomyr District Administrative Court has case No. 240/26250/23 dated September 19, 2023, where the plaintiff is the Private Enterprise "Magnitron-4C", and the defendant is the State Service of Ukraine for Emergency Situations. For a comment, the journalists contacted the director of "Magnitron-4C", an expert in man-made fire safety, Matushchenko Sergey Vitaliyovych.

In a comment to the journalist of our publication, Serhii Vitaliyovych noted that the calculation procedure, on the basis of which a conclusion is made whether the object belongs to the objects of increased danger, allows many options for interpreting its requirements. "I had orders for 130 gas stations. In the initial calculation, 125 of them do not belong to objects of increased danger. The State Emergency Service, which approves the calculations and makes a decision on whether or not to assign the object to increased danger, interprets the "ambiguous provisions" of this document in its favor. At the moment, I have opened five court proceedings related to identification problems with the State Emergency Service, which have been ongoing since the beginning of this year. We won one case in the court of first instance, an appeal is currently being filed. It's just wasting time. All others are in the process of consideration, but the essence of these issues is the same," Serhii Vitaliyovych noted.

From our own sources in the Zhytomyr District Administrative Court, we learned that this includes the network of gas stations SOCAR, which is a client of "Magnitron-4C". It is worth noting that the SOCAR gas station network invested more than $6 million in charity and the development of social and cultural projects in Ukraine. Among charity projects, the main focus is on helping children.

At the same time, the chief state fire inspector of Ukraine Oleksandr Chekrygin, under whose signature "Magnitron-4C" received a number of "rejections", interprets the provisions of the Law in his favor. Thus, gas station market participants, on the condition of anonymity, reported that the price of a positive decision of the State Emergency Service for one gas station ranges from 200 to 500 u.e. In total, thousands of such objects passed through the department.

We remind you the Security Service of Ukraine was investigating the use of such schemes According to SBU spokesman Artem Dekhtyarenko, officials of the State Emergency Service demanded bribes from the managers of shopping centers, gas stations and companies for the accelerated approval of the permit documentation necessary for conducting business activities. First of all, it concerned the approval of plans for the localization and liquidation of emergency situations and accidents at potentially dangerous objects. According to the SBU, officials earned more than 10 million hryvnias a month.

Because of the bribe received, the rescuers did not check the fire safety in the specified places. "Part of them turned out to be unable to provide civil protection of citizens during emergency situations. In particular, during the liquidation of the consequences of Russian shelling. Thus, they endangered the lives and health of Ukrainian citizens," said Artem Dekhtyarenko.