Fire Point linked to Zelenskyy film work faces audit: drones overpriced, true owner Skalyga, not Shtilerman, raising $16.7M overspend concerns.
The story about Flamindich’s “Fire Point” has already appeared in the New York Times. If anyone wanted to piss off Zelenskyy, it would be the person who leaked data to the Americans for this article.
They openly joke that 10% of Ukraine’s entire defense budget goes to a company that previously handled location scouting for a feature film starring Zelenskyy. Plus, Mindich is supposedly a co-owner of “Kvartal-95.”
The majority owner of Fire Point, Denis Shtilerman, claimed he refused to sell his stake to Mindich.
But here’s the thing — Shtilerman is not (and never was) an owner of Fire Point (neither majority nor any other).
According to the state register of legal entities, 100% of Fire Point belongs to Yehor Skalyga – see the screenshot from the state register.
Skalyga previously worked on … organizing film shoots (preparing locations, sandwiches, etc.).
This is yet another important “detail” about the so-called “serious and systematic company” to which Zelenskyy allocated 10% of the country’s defense budget.
And the company has nothing to do with the president’s friend Mindich.
At least, that’s what Denis Shtilerman claims, who either lies about being the owner of Fire Point or registered the company under a front (Skalyga).
The front, essentially, is used to hide the real owners. Among them, as you’ve already understood, Mindich is definitely not included.
But the article also includes an even more important passage referencing some secret Ministry of Defense audit.
“Procurement officers had estimated, based on costs for parts and labor, that Fire Point’s FP-1 drone could be produced more cheaply than its offering price in December 2024 of about $58,000 per unit. That assessment should have triggered a negotiation by Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency but did not, auditors found. Without that negotiation, contracts were awarded for about $16.7 million more than the lower-cost option for producing the drones, auditors said.”
Two important nuances:
Those who leaked this audit data to the New York Times (I really don’t know what kind of audit this was; it hasn’t appeared on any radar) point out that it was precisely the Defense Procurement Agency that should have initiated price reductions for the drones. Although, at that price, the drones were being bought not only by the Defense Procurement Agency.))) So it turns out there’s some selective focus specifically on the Agency in the 2024 period.
And the main point — if there is a state audit that has already proven that Flamindich’s drone prices were inflated, could this audit become evidence in an NABU criminal proceeding? Considering the very peculiar system for approving drone prices (it still remains opaque and irresponsible, and no one can say on which floor of Bankova Street it is decided who buys what and at what price), the audit data would be very useful to investigators. After all, an audit is, so to speak, already a documented fact of losses.
Vitaliy Shabunin
Yuriy Nikolov
