A new star has risen in Ukraine's criminal firmament, just halfway to democratic Europe. Kateryna, the daughter of renowned cardiac surgeon and writer Nikolai Amosov, can rightfully claim this title. She has become a sort of Murka from a song once popular among the Ukrainian elite.
Ekaterina Amosova, the colorless and hopeless head of the hospital therapy department at Bogomolets National Medical University, where it had been gathering dust on the bottom shelf of a closet for almost a quarter of a century, suddenly, on a wave of student protests, rose to the helm of the renowned medical school in February 2014. On the wave of those same protests that first crushed President Yanukovych and then, under the slogans of lustration and the fight against corruption, ousted tens of thousands of assorted and diverse bosses across the country.
But the organizers of the student protest campaign certainly didn't expect that their efforts would result in the rapid career advancement of the previously unknown Ekaterina Amosova, who had languished for decades in the shadow of her father's worldwide fame.
First, the successful careerist practically self-appointed herself acting rector of NMU, and then, as a result of desperate intrigues and thanks to high-ranking patronage, she almost forced the Ministry of Health to appoint her rector.
It is hardly worth recalling that, according to the laws of the revolutionary genre, the true leaders and organizers of the student campaign against corruption were themselves soon discredited, morally crushed, and thrown out of the university by the newly appointed "rector of the revolution."
To be fair, it must be acknowledged that the stellar Amosov genes, which had previously lain dormant in Catherine's body for over fifty years, finally made themselves known, albeit not in the scientific, but in the criminal field.
Nikolai Amosov saved and gave tens of thousands of children's lives by operating on their little hearts.
Kateryna Amosova generously donates tens of thousands of state hryvnias to her favorites and appointees who form her wily retinue.
Academician Nikolai Amosov also became famous for writing the outstanding book "Thoughts and the Heart," which tens of millions of his contemporaries read avidly, and based their lives and destinies on it!
Kateryna Amosova became infamous for the fact that, in less than two years of her rector's career, she and her accomplices managed to embezzle and misappropriate tens of millions of hryvnias from the budget of the Bogomolets National Medical Academy. Even in these turbulent times, this is a record for the medical field, and it's unlikely to ever be broken.
Nikolai Amosov dreamed of conquering disease, subordinating old age to human will, and delaying death, winning back decades of fulfilling creative life for the benefit of society.
Ekaterina Amosova loves a comfortable and well-fed life, just as she adores her BMW, which costs €100,000. She also dreams of leaving Ukraine forever: "If I were younger, I'd leave here. There'll be nothing here."
The criminal star of the glamorous lady Ekaterina Amosova has brightly flared up in the Ukrainian sky, and it will not go out on its own.
The irony of Ukrainian fate is that any rational and creative initiative born in the depths of society, by some hopeless law, is guaranteed to turn into its opposite in the real world.
To our deepest regret, this fate did not pass the large-scale national anti-corruption campaign. Across the country, to the beat of drums and chanting about "harmful bribes" and kickbacks, riding on a wave of "lustration" and the stigmatization of kickbackers, corrupt officials and extortionists entered the offices of power in "steel-solid ranks," their insatiability instantly surpassing all their elders of the past. Our own Ekaterina Nikolaevna Amosova, whose criminal exploits will be discussed in this article, became the true "black pearl" of this corrupt legion.
Here come the failures, the raids begin
But first things first. It's no secret that medical science in Ukraine has long been in steady decline, and the moral atmosphere there has long been permeated from top to bottom with the miasma of corrupt opportunism and moral corruption. This process has been going on for decades and has already permeated every crevice of the state and society. The gradual transformation of higher education into a paid service naturally paralyzes the ability of any higher education institution's administration to coerce students into acquiring advanced knowledge by force. Millions of students and faculty, year after year, are woven into an inextricable, corrupt conglomerate of diploma-producing institutions. Ukraine has become a country with an illusion of higher education in general, and a delusion of higher medical education in particular. Where vital and highly specific professions, such as medicine or engineering, are concerned, the decadence of the Ukrainian academic system appears particularly indecent. But the fact is that before Ekaterina Amosova took over as rector, the rate of degradation of the educational environment at Bogomolets National Medical University at least did not outpace the national decline.
But as soon as Amosova took over the rector's chair, the "load-bearing walls" of Bogomolets University's centuries-old authority simply collapsed.
Against the backdrop of the "European" incantations of civil activists, the "first information bomb" exploded at the medical university. With Amosova's arrival as rector, widespread bribery and massive extortion of students rapidly reached the proportions of a veritable tsunami. Added to this was the fact that Ekaterina Amosova's arrival swept through the university with a wave of dismissals of all those who disagreed with both her candidacy and her clientele, instantly placing a corrupt leash on the medical university's academic and teaching elite. Among the victims were both the instigators of the student protests and several distinguished academic figures of international renown who refused to accept the new order. The dialectic, however, is that by getting rid of the internal opposition, the rector simultaneously deprived the university of a huge share of its intellectual and scientific potential, which had at least somehow supported the university’s authority in recent decades.
All these upheavals in the student and faculty communities led several Middle Eastern embassies to issue statements terminating cooperation with Bogomolets National Medical University on matters of medical specialist training. Ukraine's medical elite was bluntly and bluntly "slapped in the face." And it wasn't even Ukraine's customary mentoring European curators who slapped them, but rather the staid Africans, previously considered hopelessly backward. It must be acknowledged that Rector Amosova has truly "made Ukraine famous" throughout the world. Now, even in Africa, every self-respecting national elite realizes that Ukraine produces trashy medical diplomas. If even at the renowned Bogomolets National Medical University, diplomas are awarded for bribes, then what's going on in the Ukrainian hinterlands? That's precisely how the enlightened Africans are thinking. And what do Europeans think about all this?
Moreover, the newly appointed rector was also able to confirm for herself the truth of another popular saying: "misfortunes never come alone."
Thus, according to the results of an industry-wide monitoring of knowledge quality conducted by the Ministry of Health, Bogomolets National Medical University ranked last, 15th, among all medical universities in Ukraine. It's hard to imagine a greater disgrace. Elite Kyiv medical students, enjoying the best conditions and an undeniable social status advantage, compared to students from Zaporizhzhia and Bukovina, effectively admitted that after receiving their diploma from Bogomolets National Medical University, they would not become doctors, but rather backward and illiterate "quackers," standing at the tail end of the race for knowledge. And the main credit for this also goes to Rector Kateryna Amosova. This is precisely the conclusion reached by the thousands of members of the Ukrainian medical community. The credibility of the university and its rector in the academic community has been fatally damaged below the waterline.
But the collapse of scientific and teaching standards didn't end NMU's troubles. Ekaterina Amosova brought an even greater disaster to her rector's post: her criminal clientele, led by her husband, Vladimir Mishalov, head of the Department of Pediatric Surgery and also chairman of the NMU Public Council. He is considered the medical university's real rector, operating in the shadow of his famous wife.
It was Mishalov and his protégé, Alexander Nikityuk, who became the vice-rector for scientific, pedagogical, and administrative work, who, in the space of just a few months, turned a respectable medical university with centuries-old traditions into a giant thieves' nest, where unbridled and unbridled embezzlers ruled the roost.
Such epithets could be considered somewhat exaggerated, even overdone, if not for the dry statistics of the facts. The ugly truth is that the audit conducted by the State Financial Inspectorate of Ukraine following Rector Amosova's eighteen months in office at NMU officially reached the following conclusion:
State Financial Inspectorate
ACT
O2.03.2016 No. 04-21L
Kiev
Audit of the financial and economic activities of Bogomolets National Medical University for the period from October 1, 2012 to December 1, 2015.
Total amount of losses:
Total: 73,974,414.69
At the same time, tireless activists sorted through the violations, embezzlement, and theft and came to the following conclusion:
Of the declared 73 million 974 thousand 414 hryvnias, the following should be considered directly guilty of illegal embezzlement:
Rector E.N. Amosova — 26 million 091 thousand 451,62 UAH
Vice-Rector Nikityuk O.A. — 669 thousand 429,86 UAH
And one more, truly fantastic point from the audit report:
Losses, financial mismanagement. Unconfirmed volumes of work performed and expenses incurred during the fulfillment of contractual obligations.
Total for this section: 44 million 013 thousand 797,78 UAH.
It's worth noting that NMU's budget is estimated at approximately 380 million hryvnias. This means that the new management team, which raised the flag of the fight against corruption in the wake of the Maidan protests, has appropriated and embezzled every fifth hryvnia from the university's annual budget.
These figures eloquently demonstrate the paradoxes of today. Kateryna Amosova, who ascended to the throne of Bogomolets University under the banner of fighting corruption, managed to embezzle and misappropriate 52 times more public funds from her own university's budget (26 million hryvnias) in just two years than her predecessor (0,5 million hryvnias)!
During her two years at the helm of Bogomolets National Research University, Rector Kateryna Amosova illegally embezzled over 44 million hryvnias of public funds, without even bothering to explain where or for what purpose. She simply spent it as if it were her own.
Even the evil thugs were afraid of Murka.
This fact screams not only of the thieving unbridledness of a deranged official, but also of the helplessness and toothlessness of the Ukrainian state itself, incapable of forcing its own officials to act within the framework of established legal procedures using the force of its punitive machinery. Budgetary discipline in the spending of public funds is the main structuring factor of the state. In any, even the most downtrodden and harassed, fourth-world country, the spending of the smallest state penny is strictly regulated by protocols and instructions from the Ministry of Finance. These instructions are clumsy and ponderous, but this is precisely what makes them sacred for any dignitary in any country. Puff, sweat, and grumble—but strictly follow the regulations imposed from above. Every transaction requires a contract and an acceptance certificate. This is the holy of holies. The spending of every hryvnia from the treasury must leave a documentary trail, as prescribed by the instructions. Deviation from established procedure entails inevitable exposure after an investigation and inevitable punishment. This is the foundation of any effective vertical power structure. One can talk at length about democracy and independent courts, but any effective government, be it American, British, or Chinese, that guards the authority of its home country, mercilessly represses its own officials, including the highest-ranking ones, for the slightest attempt to misuse public funds at their own discretion, rather than in accordance with state regulations.
Law enforcement repression of corrupt officials is the main method of combating the phenomenon of bribery, both in democratic America and in “undemocratic” China.
But nowhere, in no country in the world, unless it is a failed state, can the audit report of the supreme financial control body contain the following statement, as in the Audit Report of the Bogomolets National Medical University:
Unconfirmed volumes of work performed!
It all looks as if the rector spent 44 million hryvnias on unknown expenses under phony contracts, didn't bother to sign the acceptance certificates for the completed work, and even refused to provide any explanation to the government's highest audit body. And the country's highest audit body remained sternly silent in response!
Even in the most backward parts of Somalia and Afghanistan, such treatment of the highest financial authorities of the state would be considered insulting and unacceptable.
If the Ministry of Finance allows this to happen, then it is openly proclaiming a course towards the actual dismantling of its own state.
But the Ukrainian elite constantly and loudly cries out for the revival and strengthening of both state power and its authority! The so-called fight against corruption—thanks to the media—has even become a kind of sham national idea in the public consciousness. But in practice, this "fight" has only led to the average rector of a failing university stealing 52 times more than before the proclamation of a nationwide movement against bribery and bribe-takers. And the blame for the widespread failure of this fight lies not so much with public activists who passionately believe in the cause, but with the systemic and pervasive nature of corruption, which has practically become the foundation of Ukrainian national purpose.
The fight against corruption is not waged by exhorting abstract corrupt officials, but only by punishing real corrupt officials based on the results of specific audits, such as the one conducted at the Bogomolets National Medical University. If the state's response to an audit is not to punish the corrupt officials, but to ignore them, then such a state is effectively pronouncing its own death sentence, no matter how lofty the rhetoric of politicians may be in attempting to cover up the euthanasia of their own country.
In this regard, the example of the National Medical University is becoming somewhat of a textbook example for modern Ukraine. There, a group of embezzlers, corrupt officials, and plunderers of public funds at the highest levels of government organized themselves into a criminal organization and, for nearly two years, openly squandered and misappropriated public funds on an especially large scale. No one in the medical university's leadership even bothered to cover their tracks or conceal their criminal activities. This is simply mind-boggling. All the facts are there in plain sight. No investigative teams need dig for them. Every criminal episode in the brief history of Kateryna Amosova's reign is a manifesto of ruthless greed, thievish obsession, and a certain brazen social and legal inadequacy.
Our chronicle also features Health Minister Kvitashvili, who is leading an investigation into the state of affairs at the National Medical University, launched by the ministry under pressure from student activists. He looks exactly like Louis de Funès as Commissioner Juve in the French comedy "Fantômas." He's incapable of catching the villain, but he can easily amuse the audience with his deliberate absurdity.
The beginning of the chain of criminal episodes involving the "main villains" should be sought in the personnel policy of the new rector of the medical university. The most important of these villains is the vice-rector for scientific, pedagogical, and administrative work, O.A. Nikityuk. It is worth noting that Nikityuk was appointed by the newly appointed rector, Amosova, to the position of vice-rector, a position not approved by the Ministry of Health. Furthermore, he is simultaneously a member of the Zhytomyr Regional Council and the chairman of the competitive bidding committee of the Bogomolets National Medical University, which directly contravenes the law "On the Implementation of Public Procurement." Furthermore, the rector herself and her husband work together in senior positions in a state organization, which also violates the requirements of anti-corruption legislation. The tenure of at least two of these three individuals—Amosova, Mishalov, and Nikityuk—is illegal. A virtual power grab occurred at the medical university, with the tacit and blatant approval of the health ministers. First, Musia, and then Kvitashvili. That's where it all began. If one can seize control of one of the country's largest universities, then why can't one seize the public funds allocated by the state for that university?
Murka was sitting there in a leather jacket.
And then, through the pages of the State Financial Service audit report, it’s like the pages of a detective novel:
It's an encouraging start. The previous audit report, conducted six months after Amosova took office as rector, found that 22,677,245,520 hryvnias had been embezzled during the construction of Dormitory No. 8. The rector and her entourage made no attempt to track down the culprits or recover the missing funds, which baffled the auditors, who were somewhat too timid in bringing the matter to the attention of the sun-faced Ekaterina Amosova. So what if a mere two million dollars, at the exchange rate of the time, had disappeared?
The audit report reveals many interesting facts. The rector managed not only state funds at her own discretion but also her student subjects, whom she was free to execute or pardon. For example, the auditors found that the rector arbitrarily exempted some public sector employees from onerous state service obligations, who were required by contract to work the required period of time as directed by the Ministry of Health, thereby undermining the state treasury by 493,824.75 hryvnias.
With particular ease and pleasure, the rector dipped into the budget to pay bonuses to herself and the medical university's top brass, represented by her beloved vice-rectors, including Nikityuk, who had been illegally appointed to a de jure non-existent position. With Rector Amosova's help, 1,151,631.04 hryvnias were illegally spent on bonuses for the command staff. "If you love, then love, then party, then party." Yet, if the rector and her vice-rectors had lived more modestly, the bonuses alone could have fully funded six years of tuition, from start to finish, for at least 15 needy students on state-funded scholarships. But Ekaterina Nikolaevna loves her own high life, just as she loves her latest BMW. And what about the needy students? They haven't adapted to the new life, to the market. They need to be more competitive!
Our heroine's favorite expense item is paying for mythical services using the "nipple system"—a simple "push in" and a bolt comes out. According to the audit report, the medical university's management transferred 150 hryvnias to a shell company for research services in this manner. But when this incident came to light during the audit, the rector sabotaged the claims process to recover the money. After all, by all indications, she would have had to file the claims herself and recoup those 150 hryvnias from her own pocket, where they had long since disappeared.
There were also some comical episodes, which are also immortalized in the audit report. For example, our subject transferred 1,564,491.40 UAH to a certain security company with the mythical name "Skorobey" under five contracts. But when the financial inspectorate auditors wanted to conduct a counter-audit, they couldn't find any guards anywhere, including at the official legal address. The guards seemed to disappear into thin air, disappearing with the money. Perhaps they were providing security services, pretending to be invisible ninjas?
But our rector wasn't just performing mystical feats, with her contractors vanishing into thin air. She also paid homage to a classic and beloved scheme from the wild 1990s. She tacked on her legal 15% on top of the price offered by suppliers from Medicalgroup-Ukraine and sent the businessmen 4,464,851.24 hryvnias. Plain and simple. The auditors couldn't figure out how the businessmen had gotten such a lucky break, reaping an additional 656,000 hryvnias from the rector's generous hand. The financial inspectors never even mentioned the word "kickback."
Rector Amosova couldn't get by without a second official car. She had one, but she longed for a second: "I don't want to be a pillar of the aristocracy, I want to be a sea queen." She wanted it, and got it. She paid 171,666.53 hryvnias from the budget and received a second car on lease. So what if the government banned second cars in the name of nationwide cost-cutting? Moreover, Ekaterina Amosova's cheerful and daring team wasn't satisfied with just one extra car and, having gotten a taste for it, also paid for special transportation services to the tune of 372,805.31 hryvnias. However, an audit revealed that this supposedly special vehicle wasn't equipped with any medical or laboratory equipment. Ordinary Lanos and Volkswagens for travel cost the same as special vehicles! And once again, the auditors couldn't think of the magic word "kickback." Our auditors from the financial inspectorate are so slow-witted!
The vice-rector Nikityuk, whom we know, repeatedly found himself in the same unusual situation when his hand touched public funds. Somehow it happened that when he paid for the certified stages of repair and construction work, an audit immediately revealed an overestimation of the estimate by UAH 30,787.94, UAH 8,733.32, UAH 48,241.04, UAH 6,955.20, UAH 7,047.23, UAH 37,628.77, UAH 68,461.20, UAH 76,217.72, UAH 23,246.16, UAH 1,175,308.80, UAH 558,043.20, and UAH 332,792.38. And each time, the vice-rector gave the same explanation: the company had mistakenly inflated the estimate, which would be adjusted in the final calculation. However, the auditors were never able to find a single payment receipt from the companies for refunds that would confirm the veracity of the vice-rector's explanations. The auditors simply took such a respected figure at his word.
But our rector's most comical incident involved the Kyivbudkom Budgetary Commercial Company. The university transferred no less than 15,176,852.13 UAH to honest businessmen. When auditors decided to conduct a counter-audit, they were provided with a letter from Kyivbudkom's management claiming that the State Fiscal Service had demanded all original documents from the company regarding its contracts with the university. However, when the financial inspectors directly contacted the tax authorities, asking them to share the confiscated contracts, they responded that no such seizure of documents had been carried out at Kyivbudkom. An examination of the aforementioned letter revealed that the registration numbers, the tax police seal, and the investigator's signature on it were forged! And, by all indications, the financial inspectors were quite satisfied with this finding. Well, the guys had a good laugh. So they forged the signatures and seals. We wanted the best!
In such a fast-paced criminal story, in which 74 million hryvnias vanished without a trace from the medical university's coffers, the catering sector couldn't have happened without it. What successful swindler doesn't love a good meal? So do our heroes. The intrigue began when Rector Amosova, by her order No. 238 of April 01.04.2015, 01.12.2015, established the NMU Catering Center without legal status. All this was done despite the university's current Charter, which stipulated that the Catering Center was a legal entity. As the saying goes: back and forth for purple rabbits! What's the difference, readers might ask? But the auditors themselves didn't understand. They arrived at this very Catering Center, which had no legal status, and there they found some people busily preparing food and feeding it to students and faculty. But somehow, the revenue wasn't working out. The auditors conducting the audit as of December 8, 27, were unable to uncover the identity of the people operating under the Center's guise or where they had been stashing their proceeds for the previous eight months. All they learned was that the medical university's cash register had received a whopping 687,33 UAH over that entire period, which likely amounted to barely more than 0,001% of the actual gross income of such a convenient food service outlet. Naturally, the financial inspectors never even considered the possibility that, under the guise of the so-called NMU Food Service Center, a completely unauthorized entity was openly operating on university premises and using university equipment, dealing in cash and not bothering with any accounting procedures. And, of course, the word "kickback" once again didn't cross the auditors' minds.
Our readers would be incredibly surprised if, in our thieves' paradise, where people so generously endowed with criminal talents rule the roost, the matter had been resolved without any scams involving state-owned property. And it was not. The audit report contains dry lines stating that the university suffered losses from leasing out premises and property amounting to no less than 508,589.48 hryvnias. And if something slipped through the cracks, someone else gained. A little helps a lot. And once again, the word "kickback" didn't even cross our inspectors' minds.
And what woman in love with her BMW doesn't love her image on television? Rector Amosova is no exception, as evidenced by her generous payments of state funds to a private enterprise with the pretentious name "Indigo World" totaling 704,660 hryvnias. The businessmen were obligated to produce various promotional videos for the University and broadcast them on Channels 5 and 24. It turned out, however, that not even the slightest trace of these television commercials existed, and the direct damage to the state from this episode alone amounted to 362,955.00 hryvnias.
An audit of compliance with current public procurement legislation also revealed procedural violations of the Law of Ukraine "On Public Procurement" totaling UAH 26,592,251.80. In other words, the heroine of our criminal story simply ignored the legally established tender procedure, completely unaware of the potential serious consequences. Yet these actions directly fall under the abuse of office law, which provides for hefty fines and even prison terms for violators. However, our auditors are far too kind.
Finally, with the arrival of the new rector, the medical university's management effectively established a trade in confidential information about the deceased. Here's how the media described the story: "Following a verbal order over the phone from Vice-Rector Nikityuk, a private enterprise named Konyakhina set up shop in the registry office of the pathology department at 5 Mechnikov Street. This was captured on hidden camera by journalists and broadcast on the "Svidok" program (NTN). Konyakhina, having unimpeded privileged access to the academic building without a legally binding lease, illegally gained complete access to collect and use information about the deceased, their loved ones, and relatives, for its own commercial purposes, information guaranteed by the state. In other words, Konyakhina not only received privileged access to the registry office from the management of the A. Bogomolets National Medical University, but also began to foist its services and funeral goods on the relatives of the deceased." You'll agree, it sounds lofty: monetizing funeral services! Very European.
Hello, my Murka, and goodbye
Let's be honest: the State Financial Inspectorate's audit report is impressive. For virtually every incident confirmed by this report, the rector and her fellow thieves are charged under specific, unambiguous criminal code articles.
But Rector Amosova, despite the noisy protests of civil activists, maintains a confident demeanor and demonstratively ignores public opinion. What's more, the rector, unabashedly, openly declares that civil activists can whistle and beat the drums until the second coming, and it won't harm her in the slightest. And the pressure from civil society won't harm her for the simple reason that she supposedly... "is friends with Marina," who holds the title of First Lady of the state. As comical as it may sound, Rector Amosova's tactics are quite successful. Despite a tangled web of outrageous scandals and public revelations, both the Ministry of Health commission and the State Financial Inspectorate audit, as if by magic, simply blew their whistles in the final analysis. Apparently, the gears of the vertical actuator, encountering reefs at the very top, are slipping and breaking off teeth, never reaching Murka Katerina and her zhigans.
Meanwhile, the medical university's caravan of life continues its downward spiral. If today Africans are refusing to pay for their citizens' medical education at Bogomolets National Medical University, then tomorrow Ukrainian citizens, even from the most provincial hinterlands, will refuse to enroll, preferring to head not to Kyiv but to Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, or Chernivtsi.
Yes, in general, even a high-ranking friend may cease to be the First Lady tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, or cease to be a friend...
I would like to conclude the article with a wish for activists not to lay down their arms and to continue to seek justice, using the entire arsenal of direct action available to them.
The only thing is that anti-corruption fighters at the medical university need to figure out how to break the entrenched pattern of this very fight in our country, whereby civil society, through mass protests, overthrows one corrupt official only to have his replacement replaced by a clone, trained to steal and plunder even more brazenly and skillfully. If the impending resignation of Kateryna Amosova follows the same pattern as her appointment as rector, which resulted in the scale of corruption increasing 52-fold under the new leadership, then the next rector of Bogomolets National Medical University will lack not only the budget of the National Medical University for the next decade, but also the budget of the entire Ukrainian state to satisfy his thieving and corrupt appetites.
On topic: Oleg Musiy. The militant medic.
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