One of the officials whose job is to introduce more transparency in public procurement has caused a scandal after she was involved in some murky real estate deals.
Tatjana Sazonova, deputy financial director of ProZorro, a state agency that operates the new e-procurement system of the same name that aims to prevent corruption in state procurement, bought two apartments over the past 17 months at prices that appear to be far below market ones.
Sazonova paid Hr 1.7 million ($65,270) for a spacious apartment of 181 square meters in a new building on 84 A Sichovykh Striltsiv Street in Kyiv. The deal was signed on June 29, according to Sazonova’s recently updated public declaration.
The real estate websites list apartments of the same area in the same building at $208,150, or more than three times above what Sazonova paid.
Sazonova also bought an even bigger apartment in her hometown of Donetsk, a Ukrainian city that since 2014 has been under control of the Russian-backed forces at war with the Ukrainian government. She paid a mere $5,455 for a 253-square-meter apartment in Donetsk, where even now the apartments of similar size are listed online for sale for between $77,000 and $169,000.
Sazonova declined to comment. Her spokeswoman refused to comment on the market prices of apartments, but said that the price of the deals was a result of mutual agreement.
Sazonova’s purchases made headlines in Ukrainian media due to the intense interest in ProZorro. The agency is seen as one of Ukraine’s few breakthroughs in the fight against corruption since the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2013-2014, and is often used by the government as a showcase.
Sazonova’s representative said that she bought an apartment in the war-torn Donetsk from a friend, who was struggling financially, with the aim of helping that friend.
Sazonova now has three apartments: Back in 2005 she purchased a 69-square-meter apartment in Donetsk, on the same street as her latest apartment, for Hr 400,000 ($79,200 at the exchange rate of the time). She co-owns it with her husband.
As a state official, Sazonova in 2016 earned an annual salary of Hr 71,339 ($2,739), and Hr 28,000 ($1,076) in bonuses from ProZorro, according to her e-declaration. She’s been with the agency since 2016.
She said she bought the apartments with funds saved from her previous work in the private sector. Sazonova used to work as a financial director in the auto industry, and later owned a real estate business. She left the private sector for a job in the government to “create positive changes in the country,” according to her representative.
Sazonova’s declared savings indeed allow for the purchases.
She has declared Hr 10.9 million ($418,358) on bank accounts, and Hr 25.5 million ($980,189) in loans to third parties. In 2016, she received Hr 4.74 million ($182,043) in interest alone.
Ukrbudgroup, the developer that sold Sazonova her latest apartment in Kyiv cheaply, wasn’t available for comment.
Other than the apartments, Sazonova owns two cars, including a 2008 BMW X5, worth between Hr 1.2 million ($46,200) and Hr 1.37 ($54,800), and a 2015 Range Rover Evoque, worth Hr 1,490,711 ($57,236) at the time of purchase, her e-declaration states.
The agency employing Sazonova, ProZorro (“transparent” in Ukrainian) runs a public e-procurement system that operates online tenders for the state agencies at all levels. It was officially launched in Ukraine in February 2015 as part of the anti-corruption strategy, to give more financial transparency to the spending of government funds, and potentially saving the state millions of hryvnias a day.
As of June 2017, ProZorro reported that it had saved Hr 19 billion ($729.5 million) in budget funds by operating transparent auctions, with the lowest bid winning.
Another breakthrough in the fight against corruption was the e-declarations system, which was launched in late 2016, in which Sazonova filed her financial information.
The system requires government employees to submit their and their family’s declarations of personal financial information to the Ukrainian government. The declarations are accessible to the public.
