After the scandal, the DOT canceled the purchase of covers for bulletproof vests for 203 million hryvnias

After the scandal, the State Enterprise “State Rear Operator” of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine canceled the tender for the purchase of 15,000 sets of covers for body armor for the Armed Forces with a total cost of UAH 203 million. Information about it made public on the Prozorro portal.
Four companies took part in the tender: “Mik” LLC, “Kharkiv Personal Protective Equipment Factory” LLC, “Ukrtak.yua” LLC and “Nextgen Ltd” company. The latter submitted the lowest price offer — UAH 142.49 million — and was declared the winner on April 3.
The company “Nextgen Ltd” planned to supply covers for British-made body armor from the company “Tradingscape Limited”, acting as its official representative. To confirm the financial capacity, documents of the manufacturer itself, as well as information on similar contracts executed by him, were submitted.
On April 7, LLC “Kharkiv Factory of Personal Protective Equipment” submitted an official claim regarding the illegal selection of the company “Nextgen Ltd” as the winner. According to the terms of purchase, when submitting documents from a foreign manufacturer, it was necessary to provide a tax declaration (Tax) and a financial report (Account) with evidence of their submission to HMRC and Companies House in Great Britain.
However, Nextgen Ltd provided only a file called “Fin Manufacturer’s Statement”, an internal document of the Director of Tradingscape Limited, with no indication of its submission to government authorities, an apostille or other confirmation of legitimacy. According to the British registry of Companies House, the director of the company, Vasyl Boyko, terminated his powers on February 28, 2025, although the financial document submitted for tender was signed by him on March 17.
DOT refused to satisfy the request to eliminate the violations, citing that it is not authorized to establish the authenticity or falsity of the documents. It was also noted that the terms of the tender allow the submission of documents from foreign manufacturers without separate requirements for the form.
However, the complaints were confirmed by the data of the British registry: the company “Tradingscape Limited” was registered on January 22, 2021 and, according to official reports for the years 2022-2024, has only one employee.
After the DOT refused to respond to the comments, one of the co-founders of the Kharkiv Personal Protective Equipment Factory, Maksym Plekhov, stated on Facebook that the purchase concerned covers for Defender 84 body armor, which were never in service with the Armed Forces. The only agreement for their supply concluded by the DOT in June 2024 was terminated unilaterally.
After publicity, the State Audit Service took control of the case. The back-office operator conducted additional verification of the winning bidder and ultimately canceled the purchase.