Deputy Vakarchuk was caught lobbying for expensive American hepatitis drugs
Olga Stefanishina, a deputy from Svyatoslav Vakarchuk’s “Voice” party, is a lobbyist for an American company that supplies drugs for the treatment of hepatitis C to Ukraine at a price per package of $700-1000, which is 20 times more expensive than analogues from Ukrainian manufacturers, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
This was reported by the Kiev anonymous telegram channel “Sorosyata”.
According to the Shadow Anonymous telegram channel, Stefanishina lobbied for registration in the National List of Medicines - a combination of active ingredients “sofosbuvir and ledipasvir”, in order to prevent American competitors from entering the Ukrainian market.
Previously, Olga Stefanishina worked as Deputy Minister of Ulyana Suprun, and before that, at the “Patients of Ukraine” charity foundation together with AIDS activist Dmitry Sherembey. In 2013, they created the Anti-Corruption Center, headed by Vitaly Shabunin, as a division of this fund.
“Stefanishina, who was delegated to Vakarchuk by the Americans, insisted that not Shabunin be included in the “Voice” list, but his assistant Sasha Ustinova, who participated in lobbying for simplified registration of foreign medicines and procurement through international organizations. In 2017, Sherembey, Ustinova and Stefanishina were under investigation by the National Police and the Prosecutor General's Office for embezzling funds from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. They were cleared through the WHO by former Deputy Minister of Health Igor Pereginets, who pushed through the purchase of medicines through “international agents,” writes “Soros.”
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