Reforming Defense Procurement Processes

What kind of pressure do we face during the procurement reform at the Ministry of Defense?

The country's largest budget,

a vast number of interests, many sanctioned individuals who have some business there and

lobby,

companies that made hundreds of millions or billions of dollars there, some...

Sanctioned individuals have the opportunity... That's a separate topic.

They come in through other people who set up companies there and so on,

corrupting someone.

A large number of corrupt people who were in the Ministry of Defense,

in other institutions.

I spent the first few weeks with law enforcement, gathering information.

They mapped out who was with whom, and who controlled the area.

All hypotheses, let's say, because it's without a trial, hypotheses.

But then, when we compared all the information, patterns emerged showing that there are people,

that are on the radar of every law enforcement agency.

We said back then,

let's put everyone through a polygraph.

Those who didn't agree were immediately fired.

Those who agreed but failed were fired.

Those who passed stayed on to work.

That is, actual corporate agents were working

in the Ministry, they just had to be kicked out.

I gathered all the people

who are in the MoD ecosystem—thousands of people, who couldn't be gathered physically—

so I made a Zoom call and said, look,

whoever of you works, if there's even one scheme, one thought, one company,

thinking about money or a scheme, I will personally do everything to put you in jail. That's it.

And the mood improved for the good people,

knowing they had joined

a company of like-minded people, and for the bad ones,

that they would now resign and do something else.