Mykolaiv law enforcement officers uncovered a corruption scheme related to the purchase of nets and fittings for defense needs. According to the police, this involves the embezzlement of over UAH 6.4 million of budget funds.
MOST learned this from court documents published on the EDRSR website.
Thus, during November investigators filed motions for access to items and documents related to the criminal proceedings under the article on embezzlement of state funds through abuse of official position (Part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
According to the investigation, current and former officials of one of the departments (which is not specified in the ruling, but it can be assumed that it refers to the Department for Civil Protection and Defense Work of the Kherson Regional State Administration, since it is the one that deals with purchases of nets and protective structures, – MOST) developed a scheme to appropriate budget funds. They signed contracts totaling UAH 32.5 million with a group of shell sole proprietors (FOPs) to supply netting and fastenings.
Law enforcement suspects that these FOPs were used as “middlemen.” They bought nets from real suppliers and resold them to the department at significantly inflated prices.
Law enforcement established that the FOPs who signed contracts with the Department purchased the netting from a limited liability company, whose name was redacted in the court ruling, as well as from a number of other FOPs from various regions (Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk region, Kharkiv).
After that, the netting was resold to the Department itself at much higher prices. According to investigators’ calculations, the combined profit of all participants in the supply chain exceeded 25%, which is explicitly prohibited by the Cabinet of Ministers’ resolution on defense procurement during martial law.
As a result, according to the calculation performed, the Department overpaid for the netting by at least UAH 6,425,500, which the investigation regards as causing losses to the state budget.
The ruling additionally notes that the FOPs involved in defense contracts actually do not carry out business activities, and their details are used for “cash-out” of budget funds and to create artificially inflated prices.
Investigators asked the court to grant them access to documents held by the postal operator and obtained it.
Now the police officers will examine information about sending and receiving parcels in the names of two FOPs, express waybills, receipts, contracts, accompanying documents, data on senders and recipients, contact phone numbers, IP addresses used when ordering online, and video recordings from surveillance cameras in branches in Kherson.
The investigation also has information that some figures in the scheme not only used front persons, but also engaged in forging goods transport invoices, attempting to conceal the true routes and cost of supplying the nets.
It should be noted that no expert examinations have yet been conducted in the criminal case, so it is currently impossible to determine the true amount of the losses.
Recall that, according to the head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration Oleksandr Prokudin, in Kherson region they plan to protect 264 kilometers of routes with anti-drone nets. The total cost of these measures is UAH 300 million. At the same time, according to the same Prokudin, it is not possible to allocate such funds from the regional budget .