The "chestnut scandal" had become international - the Kyiv City State Administration said the Italian side was to blame for the substitution of chestnut seedlings planted on Khreschatyk this spring.
"It has already been determined that the substitution did not happen in Ukraine. We will go to the Italian embassy and will file a lawsuit. We are ready to prove that the Italians are guilty," advisor of the Kyiv City State Administration head, Oleksandr Mazurchak, told Interfax on Thursday.
Mazurchak said that it would be easy to prove by taking earth samples from the seedlings' roots.
The “chestnut scandal” had become international – the Kyiv City State Administration said the Italian side was to blame for the substitution of chestnut seedlings planted on Khreschatyk this spring.
“It has already been determined that the substitution did not happen in Ukraine. We will go to the Italian embassy and will file a lawsuit. We are ready to prove that the Italians are guilty,” advisor of the Kyiv City State Administration head, Oleksandr Mazurchak, told Interfax on Thursday.
Mazurchak said that it would be easy to prove by taking earth samples from the seedlings’ roots.
The Kyiv City State Administration will demand the Italian side change seedlings. The chestnuts planted on Khreschatyk will be re-planted in autumn to other places in Kyiv if they turn out to be resistant to moths and heat, Mazurchak said.
“The best variant would be that, for example, they [Italians] supplied us with a batch of normal Briotii [chestnuts]. And they sold us these chestnuts, not to bring them back to Italy, for half the price roughly said, or even better, gifted them so that we could replant them in other places if they are good and resistant to moths,” Mazurchak said.
Mazurchak said he expected “to have the response of the Italian side on this incident” on Friday and representatives of the Kyiv authorities would go to Italy on Monday. “We are preparing a trip to Italy on Monday for our representatives to this company [which supplied the chestnut seedlings]. We plan that deputy head of the Shevchenko District Administration and gardener, who won the tender for the supply, will go,” the official said.
“The issue is clearly this: the Italian company supplied us not with the chestnuts listed in supporting papers. I checked the documents, they have been issued exactly to Briotii red horse chestnuts. It is clear that these chestnuts do not comply with the supporting documents,” Mazurchak said.
The Shevchenko plant department has already prepared a claim from Professional Gardener company, which won the tender to supply the seedlings and bought them from the Italian company. Professional Gardener prepared the same claim to the Italian supplier.
“There are two variants: either the Italian company made a mistake and it is to take responsibility up to changing all the trees at its expense or this company conspired with suppliers [Professional Gardener] and in this case the result will be the same,” Mazurchak said.
It has been reported that 289 chestnut seedlings were planted on the main street of Kyiv, Khreschatyk, this spring and 115 out of 289 were planted with sponsors’ funds, the rest at the expense of the city budget. It was expected that UAH 980,000 would be allocated from the budget but suppliers have been paid only a half of this sum so far.
The Briotii chestnuts were expected to be planted but it turned out after the trees have been planted that these were different chestnuts.
Kyiv prosecutor’s office has started looking into the incident.
