Structure of relations between the management and the founder of Pontem.UA LLC
Pontem's history: how family ties helped to win government contracts
How a meeting with the Prime Minister of Moldova secured a contract worth 150 million lei for Pontem
Pontem.UA systematically violates labor laws - feedback from former employees
Pontem.UA has increased the amount received from government tenders by more than 10 times in 4 years
The Lithuanian company Pontem, which recently won the tender of Ukrzaliznytsia for the rental of restaurant cars in Intercity trains, has been literally capturing the Ukrainian market for children's meals in schools and kindergartens, receiving one after another new million-dollar tenders. One gets the impression that the state is leading the Lithuanians by the hand, clearing the way for them from Ukrainian competitors. At the same time, parents of schoolchildren constantly complain about the services of Pontem.UA, suspecting the company of violating labor laws and delaying wages. And although the quality of food for schoolchildren provided by Pontem.UA is questionable, the company is eager to feed military personnel as well. Who is covering the unscrupulous business of the Lithuanian Norkus Irmantas?
From June 1, instead of the WOG company, which served the railway for the past 8 years, another company, unknown to many, LLC "Pontem.UA" began to provide catering services in Ukrainian high-speed "Intercity" trains. It won the tender of "Ukrzaliznytsia", having received the right to rent restaurant cars and organize meals for passengers of 16 high-speed trains for the next 5 years.
Valeriy Gudenko, lawyer of Dmitry Firtash and Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, starts feeding Ukrainian schoolchildren
LLC "Pontem.UA" with the main activity - the supply of other ready meals - appeared on the Ukrainian market in July 2016. The founder of the company is the Lithuanian company JSC "Baltiyos Paslaugu Group", the ultimate beneficiary of which is the citizen of Lithuania Norkus Irmantas. Initially, the head of the Ukrainian subsidiary of Baltiios Paslaugu Group was also the Lithuanian Audryus Janushkaitis, today the company is managed by the 55-year-old Ukrainian Valery Gudenko, and the signatory from January 2022 is Volodymyr Tsyba.
Valery Gudenko previously worked as a lawyer, and was also a lawyer in the companies of Yanukovych's former associates - in PJSC "Ukragro NPK" of oligarch Dmytro Firtash and PJSC "Zakhidinkombank" Yuriy Ivanyushchenko - ex-people's deputy from the Party of Regions, known as "Yura Yenakievsky", located wanted since 2014. In the GetContact application, Gudenko is still signed as "Valery Ukragro", "Gudenko Valery Evgenovich Zahidinkombank" and "Valery Firtash".
Volodymyr Tsyba is also a lawyer and was one of the founders of the Spero Law Group bar association. Until 2017, he worked as the chief legal advisor of Stroy Center LLC, where he was involved in the preparation of tender documents. "Stroy Center" LLC is engaged in trade in grain, raw tobacco, seeds and animal feed, wholesale trade in chemical products, retail trade in fuel, and also actively imports oil products from the Lithuanian company Oilead CJSC.
Valery Gudenko, judging by the tags in GetContact, also worked at Stroy Center. Perhaps this is how Tsiba and Gudenko met the Lithuanian Norkus Irmantas, who, having decided to expand the geography of his business from the Baltic countries to Ukraine, appointed lawyers with many years of experience in resolving business disputes of major players during the Yanukovych regime to manage Pontem.UA LLC. Presumably, Irmantas already understood his strategy for seizing the Ukrainian market, so the bet was made precisely on people who would help him, on the one hand, to win tenders one after another, and on the other hand, to resolve complaints related to the company's dubious activities.
Pontem's history: how family ties helped to win government contracts
The activities of the Pontem company in Lithuania began as early as 1968 with the usual store Smulkaus urmo in Vilnius. The store was created to provide food for kindergartens, hospitals, pioneer camps and other institutions and organizations. In 1990, with the collapse of the USSR, Smulkus urmas was registered as a state-owned enterprise, and after privatization in 1992, it became a closed joint-stock company "Smulkus urmas".
In the 2000s, the company began to provide school catering services, and later developed and launched the Myls brand of catering services. Then the enterprise became part of the group of companies "ZIA Valda" of the Lithuanian businessman Gediminas Zhemialis, who was closely connected with people close to Vladimir Putin. In particular, with Yevgeny Prigozhin, Arkady Rotenberg, Ilgam Ragimov, a fellow student and friend of the Russian dictator, as well as Artur Taymazov, a member of the Russian State Duma from "United Russia".
The father of the main shareholder of "ZIA Valda", Vidmantas Zhemialis, was a member of the Lithuanian Parliament at the time, which allowed the company Smulkus urmas to win a tender in May 2009 for the lease and maintenance of the canteen, restaurant, buffet and shop of the Lithuanian Seimas. And then everything went like clockwork: a few months later, Smulkus urmas received a contract to organize meals for the workers of the Ignalina NPP, and then one by one the company won tenders for meals in kindergartens, schools, hospitals, airlines, and large industrial enterprises in various cities of Lithuania.
Apparently, then Smulkus urmas realized that the market should not be entered from below, but from above, i.e. through the offices of the authorities. Taking advantage of his father's official position, Gediminas Zhemialis became one of the main players in the catering market in Lithuania in just two years.
In 2013, the company already managed to fall into a scandal with tax evasion, which is probably why in January 2013 it changed its name to ZAO Pontem. According to the Lithuanian media, at that time the influential politician Juoz Bernatonis helped the company to receive tenders worth millions of euros. In the fall of 2015, CJSC "Pontem" acquired Irmantas Norkus, which by that time had already competed with it for state catering contracts with its company "Kretingas maitas". Thus, by merging two major players in Lithuania, a real business monster was formed, which occupied more than 40% of the Lithuanian market for the organization of food in public institutions.
Monopoly is always accompanied by violations. Norkus' companies "Kretingos maitas" were suspected of fraud, embezzlement of large amounts of assets and fraudulent accounting in the years 2014-2016, which resulted in losses of more than 100,000 euros to the Lithuanian tax authorities. This led Irmantas to change the name of the company to “Bruneros”. However, this did not help much as the Lithuanian state authorities continued to record Irmantas Norkus' business violations. In particular, the State Food and Veterinary Service of Lithuania classified more than half of Bruneros kitchens and almost a third of Pontem kitchens in the high risk category. Despite this, from 2015 to 2018, Pontem and Bruneros still concluded contracts with the state worth more than 125 million euros.
How Lithuanian Minister Kerushkauskas and Ukrainian President Poroshenko acted as lobbyists for dubious businesses
And this is in a country that is part of the EU, with its strict anti-monopoly legislation and anti-corruption policy. Is it necessary to say that in Ukraine it is much easier to conduct business on public tenders? Of course, if you know what, where, with whom and how. Norkus Irmantas is helped in this by lawyers Valery Gudenko and Volodymyr Tsiba.
The tactic was chosen as follows: if Pontem.UA LLC does not win the bidding, or if the tender committee does not accept the company's application, Pontem's lawyers file complaints with the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, thus seeking a complete cancellation of the bidding, which gives the company the opportunity to apply again for repeats, but now already knowing the prices of competitors and the documents required for participation.
But at first the Antimonopoly Committee rejected the complaints of Pontem.UA LLC. Until a certain point. Meanwhile, the Plenipotentiary Minister of Lithuania in Ukraine Hvidas Keruskauskas came to Ukraine to protect the company. Together with Irmantas Norkus, he held meetings with heads of state bodies, mayors, where they talked about innovative approaches in the organization of food for children in schools and patients in hospitals, brought to Ukraine by the Lithuanian company Pontem. Most likely, such a meeting could have happened with the leadership of the Antimonopoly Committee, because right after the visit of Kerushkauskas, AMCU, based on the complaints of Pontem.UA, began to recognize the decisions of the tender committees as invalid and allow the Lithuanian company to participate in the tenders. This is how dozens of contracts were won in the Departments of Education in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.
In September 2016, Pontem.UA LLC won the first contract for UAH 5.1 million in the Department of Education of the Darnytsia District State Administration in the city of Kyiv, having existed at that time for only 2 months from the day of registration. Having won this tender, the Lithuanians immediately started applying for tenders in Mykolaiv, Kherson regions, Chernihiv, Myrhorod, Poltava and Kremenchug. In all regions, "Pontem" won contracts not without the help of AMCU.
Thus, in Chernihiv, Pontem.UA LLC was initially not allowed to participate in the tender due to documentation violations, but the intervention of the Antimonopoly Committee forced the tender committee to admit the company. The same thing happened in Poltava, where the education department rejected the application of the Lithuanians due to the absence in the package of documents of an approximate two-week menu for schoolchildren's meals, agreed in the management of the State Consumer Service, as well as documents confirming the right to own or lease means and equipment. What did Pontem.UA LLC do? That's right, it filed a complaint with the Antimonopoly Committee, which again sided with the company, forcing the Poltava Department of Education to completely cancel the tender, because violations were also found in the applications of other bidders. So don't get to anyone. Because of this, Poltava students generally did not receive food from the city authorities for some time - the attempt of Pontem.UA LLC to "take" contracts through AMKU led to this in many cities, in Kyiv in particular.
Parents of students in Poltava were sent a notice about the impossibility of providing their children with food due to a canceled tender following complaints from Pontem.UA LLC to the AMCU
Wherever "Pontem.UA" LLC faced opposition in bidding, complaints were made to AMKU, which always cleared the way for Lithuanians to receive the desired contracts. In 2020, as "Our Money" wrote, "Pontem.UA" in the bidding for UAH 57.5 million for meals for schoolchildren in the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv "destroyed" competitors - KP "Promin" of the Svyatoshynsk RDA - with the help of the Antimonopoly Committee, which forced the tender committee rejected the utility companies' application, because they did not provide a certificate of ownership or a lease agreement for the premises/building/warehouse (in the absence of this document, the customers most often rejected the applications of "Pontem.UA" LLC). As a result, the Lithuanians, with the only remaining competitor — the Dnipro Food-Cook LLC, which submitted an offer only 8 thousand hryvnias more expensive, won the bidding.
By the way, the analysis of the contracts received by Pontem.UA LLC in Ukraine shows an interesting fact: very often Lithuanians manage to win the auctions by offering a price literally a thousand or even a couple of hundred hryvnias cheaper than their competitors. In the Mykolaiv region, Pontem outbid its competitor, the Odesa company Olympia Service, by offering a price just 1 hryvnia lower. "Olympia Service" stated that the local authorities in the Mykolayiv region clearly lobbied for the interests of Pontem.UA LLC.
And it is not surprising. In December 2018, the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko (who knows him for such merits) kindly promoted Pontem.UA LLC during the Ukrainian-Lithuanian business forum, stating that this company "has established a system of high-quality food in Ukrainian schools over the past two years" (having already received 57 contracts for the total amount of UAH 190 million at that time — a dream for a company that is new to the market). After this public recognition, the path of Pontem.UA LLC to receiving new and new contracts from the state became even faster and easier - if the president himself "fits in" for this company, how can the tender committees argue?
Do you remember the strategy of entering the market not from below, but from above? Apparently, after Lithuania, Pontem managed to implement it in Ukraine as well. And not only Ukraine.
How a meeting with the Prime Minister of Moldova secured a contract worth 150 million lei for Pontem
The Lithuanian company Pontem CJSC came to Moldova at the end of 2018, where it registered its daughter Pontem. X SRL. She immediately began to participate in tenders for the organization of meals for children in schools and kindergartens in Chisinau, however, she was disqualified due to the lack of documents that would confirm her ability to cope with the task. Of course, the Moldovan "Pontem" immediately filed a complaint with the National Dispute Resolution Agency, but lost.
Therefore, it was decided to immediately involve the highest authority figure. Norkus Irmantas managed to meet with the Prime Minister of Moldova, Pavlo Filip, where he told him about the problems with nutrition in educational institutions in Moldova and how they can be solved.
A few months after that, Pontem. X SRL easily received a contract for 150 million lei for the organization of meals for 6.8 thousand children in 66 educational institutions of the largest region in Moldova - Strashenskyi. And Prime Minister Philip visited a kindergarten in Strasheny, where he declared: "There is almost always resistance when you come with something new. But we will overcome it at the expense of quality. I am sure that the project will be successful and will expand to the whole country."
It is not known what Norkus Irmantas promised the Ukrainian president and the Moldovan prime minister in response to the lobbying of his business in their countries at the highest level. But while Poroshenko and Philip were telling their people about the exceptional quality of nutrition from the Pontem company, in Lithuania itself, the Norkus enterprise was blacklisted at that time for supplying schoolchildren with milk that did not meet quality standards.
In Ukraine, the situation is completely different: no one is put on any black lists for violations, no one is held accountable. Although violations in the work of "Pontem.UA" in recent years, the parents of the children and the officials themselves have accumulated more than one "black list".
“Pontem.UA systematically violates labor laws - feedback from former employees
Former employees of Pontem.UA LLC leave many comments about systematic withholding of salaries, or non-payment of them at all. And also informal employment. And this is not surprising. In fact, all talk about the fact that a foreign company came to adjust processes and qualitatively improve the nutrition of children in schools or patients in hospitals is a fiction from the very beginning.
Because "Pontem.UA" LLC, having entered Ukraine, did not recruit its staff of new cooks, did not purchase its new equipment, did not look for its suppliers. Her task is to win the tender, which Firtash's former lawyers are more than successfully managing to this day. After that, "Pontem" does not change anything in the kitchens of schools or kindergartens: all the cooks who worked there for another company simply "switch" to work for Norkus's company.
And, judging by the reviews, in order to save money, "Pontem.UA" recruits only part of the employees, and even then it does not register all of them, in order to save on taxes. And unregistered employees can always be "dismissed" without paying them any money at all, which former employees of the company also leave a lot of feedback about. Here is one of them: "Officially they do not employ, mislead employees, delay the promised salary or do not pay it at all. They are forced to work overtime and go to work on weekends, which is not compensated in any way. As a result, you work 17 hours a day without days off, and you don't get paid." What kind of improvement in quality can we talk about in such conditions is a rhetorical question. Rather, on the contrary, about deterioration.
"The company sucks, staff cuts immediately, wherever it goes! Well, of course, it's better to fill your pocket with fewer people, and 1 cook will cook food for 200 children," wrote another user in September 2021.
“Pontem.UA feeds Ukrainian children with food of inadequate quality: complaints are received systematically
Almost immediately, as "Pontem.UA" began to win tenders of district education offices in Kyiv, parents and officials began to complain. The first people to talk about the quality of the Lithuanian company's work were in the Solomyansk district of the capital. After the company won the tender with the most favorable offer of 7 hryvnias for one school breakfast, it turned out that it did not have the resources to provide schools with food, as a result of which the children simply remained without food, and the leadership of the Solomyansk RDA was forced to turn to prosecutor's office
A year later, the Main Department of the State Production and Consumer Service conducted inspections of the quality of food in the capital's schools and kindergartens. And it was in the districts where Pontem.UA LLC worked that the most violations were detected.
"Only in the last month it was discovered that the company "Pontem.UA" violates many rules and norms when providing baby food services. I will name only some of the violations that are recorded: violations of the technological regime, storage conditions for raw vegetables, meat and fish, rules for washing products, etc.," said Oleg Ruban, head of the State Production and Consumer Service in Kyiv, adding that all this is confirmed by laboratory tests.
But neither appeals to the prosecutor's office nor promises to terminate the contracts helped: "Pontem" continued to win tenders, and complaints continued to arrive. Parents of students of the "Kyivska Rus" gymnasium in Osokorky, hearing children's constant complaints about the quality of food in schools, began to make their own inspections of the canteen and kitchen in the gymnasium.
"We saw some fermented products of strange quality, inedible zucchini caviar, black buckwheat that no one could swallow, oil of unknown origin," a mother who participated in the inspection of school food told "Left Bank" publication. In addition, the parents discovered that there are not enough workers in the kitchens, and those that are, go to work without sanitary books and undersize the portions.
“To say the food is terrible is an understatement! Rotten products, reinforced concrete buns, horror! And this was fed to children, some of whom still don't even know how to chew properly," a user wrote about Pontem.UA on the website of company reviews in January 2023.
And in October 2019, a resident of Kyiv, Maryna Rassolova, published in the Parents SOS group on the Facebook social network photos of what children are fed at school No. 332 of the Darnytsky district of Kyiv, where her child studies. "Another shock from the cooks of Pontem.UA LLC at school 332. This is even worse than borscht from yesterday's leftover cabbage. Today, according to the menu, potatoes are homemade and vegetables are natural, but since vegetables were not brought in, someone decided to give plums. And so, after the first shift, a person from the team threw the leftover potatoes into the trash can. Then the children on the second shift came to eat and found plum pits in their mouths! Stones from plums that the children ate earlier! And this is not one child, at the same time 5 children complained to the teacher. As it turned out, the team cooked very few potatoes, so they decided to get everything out of the garbage can! And after what was discovered, the children who will come for the third break, of course, have nothing to eat, so they were served pasta, small portions of pasta that stuck together to the point of horror," the woman wrote.
In school #332 in Kyiv, children complained that the cooks of "Pontem.UA" gave them food from the garbage bucket that other schoolchildren did not finish
Marina's post collected more than a thousand likes and several hundred comments. Of course, negative ones. "I'm in shock, I'm scared to think what kind of bacteria got into children's plates from the sink bucket. It's the end of giving undernourishment," wrote Hanna Donets.
Was there any reaction? Was Pontem.UA LLC blacklisted, as the authorities in Lithuania did? Has this company been kicked out of schools? No, she continued to win tenders for the organization of meals in schools and kindergartens in Kyiv and other cities all the following years until today.
“Pontem.UA has increased the amount received from government tenders by more than 10 times in 4 years
Criminal proceedings No. 12021100040001743, opened in June 2021, on the fact of appropriation of budget funds by the company "Pontem.UA" under contracts with the Department of Education of the Dnipro District in the city of Kyiv state administration by entering into the documentation on the distribution of food products, knowingly false information about Kyiv, did not help either. received their supplies and their quality. Pontem was even searched, but would you be surprised to learn that no verdict followed, and the case, as usual, was quietly lost somewhere?
To date, Norkus Irmantas' company has received 181 agreements for feeding children in schools and patients in hospitals during its 8 years of stay in Ukraine.
Every year, the amounts received from the budget only grow - in a geometric progression. If in 2022 the company earned 32 million hryvnias on tenders, in 2023 — 125 million hryvnias, then in just six months of 2024 — already half a billion hryvnias! It turns out that the formula for success of "Pontem" in Ukraine works like this: the more scandals - the more contracts, the worse the quality - the more earnings.
But not the only children. Valery Gudenko, director of Pontem.UA LLC, apparently decided that not only children, but also military personnel can be fed poorly. Therefore, in the summer of 2023, the company attacked the tender of the Ministry of Defense for the supply of food products to the military units of the Armed Forces for almost a billion hryvnias. But… during the bidding, Gudenko made a mistake, and in the second round he made a final price offer of UAH 10 million instead of UAH 950, due to which "Pontem.UA" was disqualified. Even so, they could not win, because competitors offered prices 200 million hryvnias lower. In any case, it is clear that not today, but tomorrow, "reinforced concrete buns" and potatoes from the sink bucket in the near future can be expected not only by schoolchildren, but also by defenders of Ukraine.
As well as passengers of Ukrzaliznytsia high-speed trains. By the way, guess who helped Pontem.UA to move WOG from there? That's right, thanks to the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, which suddenly became concerned about the protection of economic competition and turned to the UZ with the demand to carry out a new selection of the supplier of catering services in "Intercity" trains. Of course, the company of Lithuanian Irmantas Norkus won.