Acting Board Chairman of the Ukrainian Railways joint-stock company (JSC Ukrzaliznytsia) Ivan Yurik has suspended the management of the Ukrainian High-Speed Rail ​​Company (UHSRC), which operates high-speed trains in Ukraine. The reason for the suspension is non-transparent selection of the food provider for these trains.

This was announced by the head of Ukrzaliznytsia, the CFTS portal reports.

“A few hours ago, I decided to suspend the management of the UHSRC division. Unfortunately, integrity is not always the main virtue of individual ‘employees’ of the company," Yurik wrote on his Facebook page.

“Ukrzaliznytsia will quickly organize a new tender for provision of catering services on high-speed trains. Ukrzaliznytsia’s security department has launched an internal audit of the previous tender, but it is already clear that it were not organized properly," he added.

According to the head of Ukrzaliznytsia, all previous errors will be taken into account during the conduct of the new tender and he will personally oversee the tender to ensure that it is held in in accordance with the law.

As reported earlier, commercial proposals in the tender for provision of catering services to passengers on Intercity and Intercity+ high-speed trains were unsealed last week. Little-known Greened LLC was declared the winner of the tender. Greened LLC offered to provide the services for UAH 4.025 million per month, which is only UAH 25,000 more than the offer from its closest competitor, Vog Kafe LLC, which has been providing catering services to the Ukrainian High-Speed Rail ​​Company’s passengers since 2016. However, Greened LLC was the last bidder to announce its offer, having already known its competitors’ offers. 

After the tender, Ukrzaliznytsia announced that it would conduct a detailed analysis of Greened LLC to assess its reliability and the quality of its services.