The last few months, which have brought more change to Ukraine than all the years of independence, could quickly disappear into oblivion without changing anything.
In any case, such a trend is clearly visible if you take a closer look at what has been happening in parliament for quite some time now.
In the whirlwind of events today, perhaps not everyone remembers how, almost immediately after the bloody events on the Maidan and Yanukovych's flight from the country, a group called "Economic Development" emerged in the Verkhovna Rada – one of the first fragments to break away from the rapidly collapsing monolith of the Party of Regions.
According to Anatoly Kinakh, the work of this parliamentary group will be aimed at solving socio-economic problems.
It is noteworthy that one of the most influential members of this parliamentary group turned out to be a notorious marginal figure, a lobbyist for one of the world's largest suppliers of medical equipment, B. Braun Medical Group, a partner, who was until recently a member of the Party of Regions faction. Fistal brothers and Lady Winter-Tani-Tramadol-Bakhteeva (Read more about it in the article Tatyana Bakhteeva: "cured"!) Andrey Shipko.
However, this in itself is unlikely to surprise anyone, given that the marginal Shipko hails from the faction of the fugitive dictator who robbed the country. A faction in which notions of honor, dignity, or even simply personal opinion have been emasculated for several years as ideologically harmful.
Andriy Shipko rose to power back in 2005, when he became head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional chain of municipal pharmacies, "Pharmacia." Rumor has it that Shipko helped the "Orange Revolution" at the local level, for which he was rewarded with a lucrative position.
However, already in the 2006 local elections, Andriy Fedorovich ran for the regional council as a member of the Party of Regions and became deputy to regional speaker Yuriy Vilkul, but retained his "patronage" over Pharmacy. In 2006, with the help of the Party of Regions lists, two younger Shipko brothers—Oleksiy and Oleksandr, who are both involved in the construction business—settle in the Dnipropetrovsk City Council. In the 2007 parliamentary re-elections, Shipko appeared on the "white-blue" lists under the infamous number 429, but the idea of becoming a parliamentarian remained firmly ingrained in his mind. Incidentally, it was precisely on the eve of the 2007 elections that the Shipko family achieved a personnel "breakthrough"—in August 2007, the younger brother Oleksandr became head of the regional land resources department. In 2010, Shipko again became a regional council deputy and regional vice speaker.
During his tenure in Dnepropetrovsk, the notorious Shibko established a well-coordinated corruption scheme for the theft of budget funds, as well as a system of kickbacks from chief physicians, who were forced to fulfill a quota of hiring "dead souls" and promptly transferring their "black salaries" to Andrei Fedorovich.
To further his dirty deeds, Shipko lobbied for gynecologist Valentina Ginzburg to become head of the local regional health department. And Shipko was right – her brazenness and fearlessness in stealing from Valentina Ginzburg knew no bounds. Valentina Ginzburg easily initiated the dismissal of "inconvenient" and "low-budget" chief physicians, replacing them with unprofessional crooks willing to shell out between 50 and 200 dollars for the appointment. Under the watchful eye of Andrei Fedorovich, during her tenure as head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional health department, Valentina Ginzburg initiated the purchase of a huge amount of unnecessary medical equipment, which no one uses and now gathers dust in the storerooms of Dnipropetrovsk hospitals.
Also, under Ginzburg, a scandal rocked the country in 2013 when deceased infants began disappearing en masse from a maternity hospital in Dniprodzerzhynsk. In 2012 alone, 26 babies died there. Deceased children were not recorded in the body registration logs, making it simply impossible to determine where a child was buried, or whether they were buried at all.
An exhumation of newborns from a special cemetery revealed that several organs and body parts were missing, including the spinal cord and bones. Experts claim these may have been used in the production of expensive medical drugs.
Then Shibko came to the rescue and saved the gas chamberlain Ginzburg. The prosecutor's office "could not establish" the fact of the children's abduction, but the whereabouts of the bodies of the 26 dead children remains unknown.
However, listing all the scams perpetrated by Shipko and Ginzburg would be endless. According to a source in the Dnipropetrovsk healthcare system, Valentina Grigoryevna managed to become a person hated by everyone – from doctors and hospital management to regional healthcare workers.
In November 2012, Shibko was elected as a member of parliament in the 35th electoral district, representing the party of recidivist Yanukovych. This, too, was not without the help of Valentina Ginzburg: under threat of dismissal, hospital chief physicians were forced to donate money to the unofficial Party of Regions fund for the 2012 parliamentary campaign and ensure a high percentage of patient votes for the party of thieves and murderers of the fugitive, bloody tyrant Yanukovych. After the elections, at Ginzburg's suggestion, the regional council decided to dismiss 30 chief physicians deemed "ineffective, according to the election results."
Andrey Fedorovich also demonstrated his talents in the Rada – immediately upon his arrival, he became friends with Tanya-Tramadol, paying her $700 for his appointment as chair of the parliamentary committee on health care's subcommittee on legislative support for the development of pharmaceuticals, the implementation of pharmaceutical activities, the production and circulation of medical devices, and the development of modern medical technologies.
In this field, the notorious outcast Shibko proved quite enterprising. Having allied himself with Tanya-Tramadol and the Fistal brothers, Shibko became one of the main players in the war against Raisa Bogatyreva. The war was no joke—the vaccine trade and the healthcare insurance business were at stake.
On April 5, 2013, under Shipko's leadership, Bill No. 2597-1 (on health insurance) was submitted to the Rada by Volodymyr Dudka, officially co-authored by Tatyana Bakhteyeva, Andriy Shipko, Anton Kisse, Svitlana Fabrikant, and Oleksandr Bilovor. It's worth noting that this wasn't the first attempt to regulate health insurance through legislation. Over the past ten years, this was the ninth bill on this topic, and none of them have yet been adopted.
The stumbling block was the formation of a health insurance fund, the creation of which envisioned the monopolization of the health insurance market.
Insurance industry representatives actively opposed the adoption of Vladimir Dudka's bill. "The adoption of Bill No. 2597-1 will hinder the development of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in healthcare, as it aims to create a monopoly insurer in the form of the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund," said Oleksandr Zaletov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the League of Insurance Organizations of Ukraine (LIOU), in his speech.
In his opinion, this will lead to a reduction in private investment in healthcare, since it will be economically unprofitable for private clinics to operate within the compulsory state health insurance (CSI) system.
Representatives of the insurance market complained that the registered bill lacked provisions on the possibility of functioning of the voluntary health insurance (VHI) market.
So, Ukrainians certainly won't be healthier after the law's adoption, but they will definitely become poorer, with 100% certainty. And Shipko and Bakhteyeva will profit off our health.
Andrey Fedorovich's lobbying for B. Braun Medical Group, one of the world's largest medical equipment suppliers, has not gone unnoticed. Scandals involving unjustified purchases of expensive equipment from this company have been raging throughout various regions of Ukraine for the past two years.
Following the victory of the Maidan, justice triumphed in Dnepropetrovsk: on March 31, 2014, Valentina Ginzburg was arrested and placed under house arrest on charges of abuse of power.
But if the problem were limited to the corrupt leadership of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Health Department, that would be half the problem. After all, the activities of this notorious outcast aren't limited to behind the scenes. They have the potential to influence the entire system of government in the country.
It's no secret that Mr. Shipko aims to secure as many leadership positions as possible in the most lucrative bodies of Ukraine's healthcare system—the State Service for Medicines and the Expert Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. And today, he's already partially succeeding. Specifically, he installed "his own boss" at the State Service for Medicines and Drugs, Mykhailo Pasechnik, by allocating him $750 to purchase the position. Pasechnik then paid the controversial MP Mykola Martynenko.
It's worth noting that experts see Mr. Pasechnik's appointment as the inevitable death of Ukraine's pharmaceutical market. Specifically, the director of the Institute for East European Development Studies openly declares the beginning of a new era of unprecedented corruption in the State Service for Medicines.
It's hard to imagine the degree of disappointment among businesses, and indeed among Ukrainian citizens who froze on the Maidan, endured deprivation, torture, and bullets for the sake of radical changes in the country, if such a symbiosis were to take place. Shipko was one of the architects and ideologists of the very healthcare reform that brought thousands of sick people onto the streets.
Under the schemes devised by Andriy Shipko, the head of the so-called pharmaceutical market and medical equipment subcommittee, under President Yanukovych, budget funds stolen by the "Family" were laundered and cashed out, a counterfeit vaccine was purchased, Mezhyhirya settlements were built, and unprecedented wealth was amassed, which is now spent on funding mercenaries, murderers, and the fomenting of separatism and fratricidal war. And, of course, Andriy Shipko himself is no loser, considering that when the "Economic Development" group was formed, ordinary members were immediately offered a one-time joining bonus of $1.2 million, followed by a monthly allowance of $250,000.
Despite all this, Mr. Shipko not only hasn't faced any punishment, but despite all the revolutionary changes and incessant talk of lustration, he remains calmly in his chair as head of the Verkhovna Rada's medical subcommittee. No one has even hinted at replacing him yet.
Moreover, the healthcare system is facing major changes in the near future: Minister Musiy, who broke up corrupt tender procurement schemes and relentlessly resists the zeal of his deputy, Martynenko's man, the odious Ruslan Salyutin, who was appointed to oversee tenders and implement the shadow tender schemes "designed" by Shipko and Bakhteeva, will soon be fired.
Last week, Shipko and Bakhteyeva held a meeting with Martynenko and Yatsenyuk, where they proposed an attractive system of kickbacks from tenders to the prime minister, but complained that reaching an agreement with Musiy was impossible. Furthermore, Shipko claimed that Musiy was disrupting the entire system of laundering budget funds, which had worked effectively under Bogatyryova and generated colossal profits. They agreed that Bakhteyeva and Shibko would select a suitable candidate for the ministerial post, while Martynenko would "stir up" Musiy and secure the votes in parliament for his dismissal.
Today, Andrei Fyodorovich, who has more than once betrayed his comrades, his patrons, and their and his own views, rushes from stall to stall in the desire to keep his place at the trough, in order to continue lining his already not small pockets.
With Shipko, it's the same old story - behind-the-scenes dealings, with the calculating cynicism of a red-faced nouveau riche, smiling today about unity, and tomorrow sending another tranche of black cash to murder innocent Ukrainian citizens.
Highway
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