The National Police exposed a large-scale scheme to embezzle funds for the purchase of firewood for the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The Strategic Investigations Department of the National Police of Ukraine, together with other law enforcement agencies, conducted an operation to stop corruption schemes in the field of energy supply for the defense sector.
Law enforcement officers documented the facts of systemic abuses during the purchase of fuel wood for the needs of units representing the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As part of the investigation, 49 authorized searches were conducted in Kyiv and 15 regions of the state, which allowed collecting evidence of the involvement of officials in the embezzlement of budget funds.
The investigation established that officials of housing and operational departments, acting in collusion with affiliated private entrepreneurs, were involved in organizing illegal activities.
The participants in the scheme concluded contracts at prices that exceeded market indicators by 30–40%, or recorded in documents volumes of products that were not actually supplied to military units. According to preliminary estimates by experts, such manipulations led to losses to the state budget in the amount of more than 100 million hryvnias.
“In order to stop criminal activity and prevent further budget losses, on April 15, law enforcement officers carried out coordinated measures in several regions of the country at once,” the press service of the National Police of Ukraine noted.
Large-scale investigative actions covered almost the entire territory of the country, including the western, central and southern regions. The searches involved officers from the State Bureau of Investigation, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Military Law and Order Service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Within the framework of 20 criminal proceedings, law enforcement officers seized documentation, means of communication, and other physical evidence confirming the fictitious nature of individual timber procurement transactions.
“Within the framework of twenty criminal proceedings, employees of the Department of Strategic Investigations and investigative units of regional police departments conducted forty-nine searches,” — emphasized investigators of the National Police of Ukraine.
Currently, six key figures in the case have received the status of suspects. Depending on the degree of participation in the criminal scheme, their actions are qualified as embezzlement of property through abuse of official position, official negligence, and negligent attitude towards military service.
The security forces continue to work on establishing the full range of persons involved in organizing the fraud, and are checking other tenders held by the housing and operational departments over the past year.
The exposure of such schemes is part of the systematic work of law enforcement agencies to cleanse the defense procurement system of corruption. Careful control over the use of funds allocated for the logistical support of the army remains a priority task for protecting the economic interests of the state. Further procedural decisions based on the results of the searches will allow returning part of the stolen resources to the budget and bringing the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the norms of the Criminal Code.
