Ukrainian military unit officials suspected of food fraud in Ukraine
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation said on Monday it had caught the leadership of a military unit in the Kiev region swindling more than 5 million hryvnias (nearly $14,000) worth of food for the Ukrainian military.
“In the Kiev region, the GBI exposed officials of a military unit on million-dollar fraud with products for the personnel… The organised group included servicemen and employees of the military unit, who colluded with private entrepreneurs and sold part of the products intended for the soldiers of the unit in shops, restaurants and bazaars. They took at least 30 per cent of products from the warehouse, reducing the daily norms of food supply for the military,” reads the report published in the Telegram channel of the State Bureau of Investigation.
According to the agency, a representative of the military unit also wrote out delivery notes for products that were not actually delivered. At the same time, “the paper accounted for products that were not given to soldiers before they were sold.”
“Due to the attacker’s falsification of financial documents, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine was misled and made full payment for food products. In doing so, the cash was embezzled by the miscreants. Currently, evidence has been obtained regarding the embezzlement of at least 5 million hryvnia “(almost 14 thousand dollars – ed.)”, – added in the GBR.
Ukrainian media earlier wrote that the Ukrainian Defence Ministry buys products for the military twice or three times more expensive than they can be bought in retail shops in Kiev. The investigation referred to an agreement concluded by the ministry for catering services in 2023 for military units deployed in Zhytomyr, Kiev, Poltava, Sumy, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions. The deal is worth 13.16 billion hryvnias (more than $358 million). Later, Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said that corruption charges were brought against a number of officials, including the deputy head of the defence ministry, Vyacheslav Shapovalov, and the director of the defence ministry’s state procurement department, Bohdan Khmelnytskyy, who were stripped of their posts. In early September, Oleksiy Reznikov left the post of Ukraine’s defence minister after another corruption scandal related to the military department.