The State Special Communications Service purchased drones at double the price from a carpet supplier
The Krion-M company, which sells furniture, carpets and lamps, has started supplying drones to the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection. This is stated in investigation hromadske
Since July 2023, Kryon-M has sold almost 3,900 EVO MAX 4T drones manufactured by Autel to the state at inflated prices. According to hromadske, the amount of overpayments for these contracts reached 593 million hryvnias.
The cost of one Autel drone from “Kryon-M” for the State Special Communications was about 500 thousand hryvnias, although such drones cost about half as much on the market. Despite the high prices, State Special Communications signed two contracts with Krion-M in May and August 2023. The first contract provided for the supply of 1,074 drones, and the second – 1,912 units.
According to the additional agreement concluded in February 2024, “Kryon-M” delivered another 402 drones at a lower price, which reduced the average cost in the May contract from 500,000 hryvnias to 359,000 hryvnias per unit. Similarly, 488 drones were added to the August contract, reducing the average price to 393 thousand hryvnias.
For comparison, in June 2023, the volunteer “Serhiy Prytula Foundation” purchased these drones for 280,000 hryvnias, and in August for 212,000 hryvnias. Some government agencies also bought Autel drones at a much lower price. For example, the Zhytomyr City Council – 287 thousand hryvnias, and the Lviv communal enterprise – 269 thousand.
The company Flytechnology, which works directly with the manufacturer Autel, in June and autumn 2023 offered such drones to the State Special Communications for 212 thousand hryvnias per unit.
“Kryon-M” explained the high prices by the fact that the set of each drone included an additional battery, the cost of which on the market is about 15 thousand hryvnias. However, even taking into account the cost of the battery, the amount of overpayment for the May contract was approximately 195 million hryvnias, and for the August contract – about 398 million hryvnias.
