Zaporizhzhia court will consider the case of commanders through whom staff soldiers received combat bonuses
SBI employees completed a pre-trial investigation into alleged fraud with military payments in Zaporizhzhia and sent an indictment to the court. According to the investigation, the head of one of the military units, together with the head of the financial service, organized a scheme under which staff employees close to the command received additional money.
The commander signed documents about the alleged participation of selected servicemen in combat operations on the front line, and the head of the financial service entered this information into the settlement documents.
The materials noted that individual servicemen allegedly performed tasks “at zero” in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, although in fact they did not leave their places of permanent deployment. As a result of this scheme, as the investigation established, the staff employees illegally received almost 700 thousand hryvnias in “combat” payments.
The commander of the military unit and the head of the financial service are accused of abuse of office for the purpose of obtaining unlawful benefit for themselves or another person, committed by a group of persons in advance of the conspiracy, as well as of official forgery (Part 2 of Article 28, Part 2 of Article 364, Part 2 of Article 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
The sanctions of these articles provide for a penalty of imprisonment for a term of up to six years. The issue of compensation for damages caused to the state is currently being resolved, and the court has ordered the seizure of the property of the defendants. Procedural management of the proceedings is provided by the Zaporizhzhia Specialized Prosecutor’s Office in the Field of Defense of the Eastern Region.
