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Institute of Legislative Ideas and StateWatch Analyze United24 Platform to Ensure Transparency and Accountability

The Institute of Legislative Ideas and StateWatch think tank have analyzed how publicity and transparency of spending 26.1 billion UAH from accounts of United 24 were ensured, as well as presented an analytical brief and platform of control over expenditures to restore health care infrastructure. 

The ILI has analyzed all 11 accounts of the United24 platform, with 28.7 billion UAH (more than 789 million dollars) raised and 26.1 billion UAH used in regard to transparency and accountability of spending the funds. The experts presented an analytical brief with recommendations of changes to be introduced to the procedure under which funds are used. 

The ILI has praised the work of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Ministry of Digitalization which have taken into consideration the recommendations and, therefore, increased the level of transparency. In particular, in cooperation with the Ministry of Restoration, changes have been introduced to the regulations of the commission on spending funds of the Fund of Destroyed Property and Infrastructure in regard to publishing all applications for financing and broadcasting meetings of the commission. The cooperation with the Ministry of Digitalization resulted into consideration of all recommendations of the ILI through the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, in particular publishing information about all raised and allotted funds, remainder of funds, independent composition of the commission in which representatives of the Ministry of Digitalization and subsidiary companies make up less than a half, determining grounds to deny allotment of funds, and setting the term to wire funds to recipients. 

Recommendations in regard to other ministries and procedures to use funds lies in concretization, exhaustiveness and prioritization of allotment of money, grounds for denials, periods of time, improvement of procedures to form commissions as well as publishing agendas of commissions, documents under which decisions are made and online streaming of court sessions is ensured.   

Consideration of these recommendations will enable to arrange the current mechanisms to use funds, attract additional resources and more effectively use the available ones, as well as conduct effective civil monitoring and control. 

StateWatch expert organization, in turn, presented a web portal Control Over Restoration Expenditures where it collected data about the financial aid received to restore health care infrastructure. Overall, since May 2022 until May 2023, 1.5 billion UAH were transferred to the account of the Ministry of Health Care at the National Bank for the purposes of medical assistance and reconstruction. As of today, 1.2 billion UAH have been spent out of this amount to make contracts on procurement of goods and services. Medychni Zakupivli Ukrainy state-owned company concluded the biggest number of contracts to buy ambulance vehicles and mobile hospitals for the amount of 587.6 million UAH and buy medical produce and aids for them for the amount of 406.6 million UAH, in particular artificial lung ventilators, X-ray devices, rehabilitation medical equipment, etc. 

StateWatch analysts have also analyzed the mechanisms to report on spendings of international assistance funds to restore health care and made recommendations for the Cabinet of Ministers to elaborate a unified procedure of systematizing and publishing data about revenues and expenditures of international assistance funds, and obliging to publish information about all spendings of United24 funds both in Ukrainian and English, proposals to allocate money; involvement of representatives of the civil society into the process of using funds and observers; holding open meetings in the video-conferencing mode, with information of such meetings further published, publishing information about dates, places and agendas of such meetings. 

As a reminder, on May 5, 2022, upon an initiative of the President of Ukraine, the United fundraising platform was created. This platform is used to fundraise billions of hryvnas donated to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine, rebuild housing, medical provision, etc. 

The United24 platform has been functioning for a year. In the course of this time, it has attracted more than 328 million dollars due to ambassadors as well as known projects such as Strength, Army of Drones, Azovstal’.

For reference: presentation “Transparency and accountability of restoration on the example of United24 accounts to support Ukraine.”