Translated material
Prosecutor's recipe
Arrested leaders of the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund have been charged
The Prosecutor General's Office, as Vremya Novostei learned, yesterday brought formal charges against the general director of the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund (FFOMS) Andrei Taranov and his deputy Dmitry Usenko, who were arrested last week. They are charged with “abuse of official powers” and “receiving a large bribe” (Articles 285 and 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The remaining two deputies of Mr. Taranov - Natalya Klimova and Dmitry Shilyaev, as well as the chief accountant of the fund Galina Bykova, the heads of the control, audit and financial departments Tatyana Markova and Nina Frolova still remain suspects.Yesterday, as part of this investigation, two more high-ranking FFOMS employees were dismissed - the head of the drug supply department, Alexandra Bazhenova, and the adviser to the general director for informatization, Gennady Orlov. According to our source, they were also interrogated at the Prosecutor General's Office, but for now as witnesses.
As a source close to the investigation told Vremya Novostey, in addition to the audit materials of the Accounts Chamber, which formed the basis of the accusation, the case contains several statements from pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, which the management of the fund allegedly forced to participate in the implementation of the state program of additional drug provision (DLO) for preferential benefits. categories of citizens. “The pharmaceutical companies simply had no other choice,” our source said. “But they couldn’t refuse for one simple reason - they didn’t want to spoil relations with the FFOMS.” According to him, instead of making a profit from the sales of their products, domestic drug manufacturers supplied goods to the regions of the country at their own expense.
Under the terms of the agreement with the FFOMS, distributors were required to buy on credit from manufacturers only vital drugs - cardiovascular, anti-tuberculosis, oncology, for the treatment of AIDS, etc. - and supply them to regional pharmacy chains, where beneficiaries would receive them free of charge with prescriptions. And then these prescriptions were sent to distributors, who presented them for payment to the territorial compulsory medical insurance funds, and from the funds received they had to reimburse drug manufacturers for the costs incurred. However, the FFOMS paid the money very reluctantly and, as a result, as our source said, it owed 48 pharmaceutical companies about 25 billion rubles. Because of this, some manufacturing companies found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy or were forced to cut production of vital drugs.
In addition, according to investigators, the distributors who won the tender for DLO also asked their Western colleagues to supply drugs, whose prices for the drugs were significantly higher than their Russian counterparts. “All this was done with one goal - to get as much money as possible through intermediary interest,” our source said. - True, it is not yet clear where the budget funds ended up. The file contains lists of drugs purchased by distributors. Moreover, in addition to vital drugs, there are also those that were not included in the list established by the fund, and their prices reached 6 thousand rubles. for one package. But beneficiaries also did not receive these expensive Western medicines.”
In addition, as the source said, the investigation established that the tender itself for the supply of drugs under the DLO program in 2006 was held only on paper. The names of the distributors - the winners of the competition - were determined in advance. “The “winners” paid huge sums for this. Moreover, the kickback was paid out of those same almost 30 billion rubles. budget funds that were allocated for the implementation of the DLO program, and depending on the degree of participation of each specific distributor, the interest rate varied from 3 to 25% of the total amount received,” our source explained. Now, as the Ministry of Health and Social Development said, the conditions for participation in the DLO-2007 competition will change.
Yesterday, parliamentary hearings were held in the State Duma on the implementation of the national project “Health,” at which the auditor of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, Valery Goreglyad , who conducted the audit of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, spoke. In light of the arrests of almost the entire leadership of the FFOMS, his speech attracted special attention - the day before, the deputies decided to postpone the meeting with the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, Mikhail Zurabov, advising him to go on vacation during the scandalous investigation. However, the expectations of those deputies who longed for new revelations in the department of Mr. Zurabov and the structures subordinate to him were not justified. Mr. Goreglyad said that in the Ministry of Health and Social Development itself, “at the moment, we have not found any facts of misuse of resources.” (It was with the identification of such facts that the criminal case under the FFOMS began.)
However, the Accounts Chamber still found complaints against Mr. Zurabov’s department, including regarding the priority national project “Health.” “When organizing and conducting centralized purchases of medical equipment for healthcare institutions, the requirements of the law on competitive bidding were not fully complied with,” the auditor said. In particular, during the period of competitive bidding, the declared volumes of purchases were subject to repeated adjustments in terms of volumes and types of purchased diagnostic equipment. Mr. Goreglyad admitted that, of course, this was due to certain specifics related to the fact that the regions themselves were often not always able to provide accurate applications. “Nevertheless, this situation provoked a certain deviation and could be a certain basis for abuse,” the auditor noted. “In violation of the requirements of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and tender documentation, government contracts for the supply of diagnostic equipment were concluded everywhere with a significant increase in the volume of purchased products compared to volumes placed on a competitive basis. In fact, without competitive bidding, an additional 2,321 units of medical equipment were purchased within the allocated funds in the amount of 3.435 million rubles, which is 31.6% of all equipment purchased on a competitive basis.”