The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) has uncovered a large-scale scheme of timber theft by state-owned enterprise officials.
Employees of the State Bureau of Investigation in cooperation with the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine exposed a large-scale scheme of wood theft, in which officials of the state enterprise “Forest Analytical Innovation Center” (LIAC) and representatives of forestry enterprises of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” from various regions were involved.
The scheme was organized by an employee of the State Enterprise “LIAC”, who made unauthorized changes to the “Unified State System of Electronic Wood Accounting”. These actions made it possible to change the information about the remaining wood in specific forests, its quality, volumes, as well as the volume of wood allowed for felling. The representatives of the forestry companies turned to the organizer to change these data, and he personally or through his colleagues at LIAC fulfilled these requests.
The surplus wood obtained in this way was either sold or used according to the personal wishes of the participants of the scheme. Representatives of forest farms in the Volyn, Rivne, Zhytomyr, and Kyiv regions made the most active use of such “services.”
The price for changing the information ranged from 5 to 30 thousand hryvnias, which the organizer received in his bank accounts. Currently, it is documented that he received more than 10 million hryvnias from the employees of the State Enterprise “Lisa Ukrainy”. In total, more than 10,000 unauthorized changes were made to the electronic system, almost half of which caused financial losses for the state-owned enterprise.
Law enforcement officers conducted more than 50 searches in different regions of the country and detained the organizer along with three of his accomplices. In total, 13 persons were notified of the suspicion, including the organizer, seven employees of LIAC and five employees of “Forests of Ukraine”.
