On January 23, 2017, the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) began a preliminary investigation into the procurement of hybrid SUVs for the National Police. According to a reply received by the Transparency International Ukraine, the preliminary stage of persecution classified this as a criminal offense under Part 2, Art. 364 (abuse of power or office, leading to serious consequences).

Remind, on November 16, 2016, the units’ service center of the National Police of Ukraine announced a negotiated procurement for the defense needs.

It was planned to purchase 635 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEVs, for the sum of UAH 959.5 million. On 14 December, a customer signed the contract with NIKA Diamond (a Mitsubishi Motors authorized dealer in Ukraine) for UAH 959.4 million.

An activist, Oleksii Tamrazov, paid attention to high prices for the vehicles. Experts of TI Ukraine exposed violations of law related to this procurement. Also, the procurement procedure for defense needs was not openly performed and the procurement of the patrol vehicles did not meet requirements of the defense.

Besides, the procurement procedure was governed by the law that does not apply to the service center units of the National Police of Ukraine. Meanwhile, 100% prepayment caused a doubt in the procedure openness. TI Ukraine is confident that this agreement must be cancelled and a new procurement procedure governed by open competition rules, “open tendering”, should be executed immediately. However, the customer paid the total amount for delivery of goods on December 28, 2016, and the cancellation of such a procedure was not completed.