The Czech initiative stopped the purchase of missiles from the Ukrainians. The company may have a corrupt background
The Gift for Putin initiative is reconsidering the planned purchase of Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missiles, for which it raised more than CZK 12.5 million in a public collection in honour of the late Dana Drabova.
The reason for this is new information about the manufacturer, which the initiative received from the Ukrainian military intelligence HUR.
Flamingo missiles are manufactured by Fire Point, a company that several sources link to businessman Timur Mindich, suspected of corruption in Ukraine's energy sector.
The company is the largest domestic drone manufacturer and was called Centrocast before 2023. Mindich's colleagues in the entertainment industry organised castings through it.
They wanted to contribute to two rockets
The founder of the initiative, Dalibor Dědek, explained to iDnes that the collected money will remain in the account for the time being. The organisers suspended the transaction when serious doubts arose whether the funds would actually go towards the product to which the donors had contributed. The initiative is now looking for an alternative solution.
Gift for Putin has long organized fundraisers for armaments for Ukraine - donations have already funded, for example, the RM-70 Przemysl rocket launcher, the T-72 tank, and the Black Hawk Chesmiri helicopter.
In the case of the Flamingo missile, it initially counted on buying one round of ammunition, but later the manufacturer announced that it would supply two. However, following new revelations, the project remains on hold until the initiative can gain certainty about the reliability of the supplier.
The manufacturer may also be linked to Jermak
Fire Point became the target of investigations by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) when they unraveled a corruption scheme around state nuclear utility Enerhoatom in mid-November.
Officials were taking "commissions" of 10 to 15 percent of the contract. The total amount of bribes collected in this way amounted to at least one hundred million euros.
Mindich, a film colleague and friend of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is being investigated by the Anti-Corruption Bureau as a possible ultimate owner of Fire Point or a "non-public shareholder". Mindich fled to Israel shortly before his arrest, as a result of which Zelensky sanctioned him as a foreigner.
Other "suspects" of unacknowledged ownership include former presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak.
The firm reportedly made its billion dollars by winning contracts for a tenth of all of Ukraine's defense purchases. However, a later audit revealed that the drone firm had bypassed the procurement process, costing the state $16.7 million.
"We understand that there is a certain amount of resentment about spending money on this particular missile, because there is a real suspicion that the manufacturer is connected to the people around Andriy Yermak," Martin Ondracek, a representative of the initiative, told iDnes.
However, Gift for Putin continues to communicate with Fire Point, which the non-profit admitted on Tuesday.
"We have been talking very intensively with our colleagues from Fire Point in the last few days... we are also talking with other people and sorting through the forest of information that has grown up around us. We want to spend donors' money responsibly and meaningfully," the initiative announced.