Ukraine says corrupt officials stole $40m from defence budget
Employees from a Ukrainian arms firm conspired with defence ministry officials to embezzle almost $40 million (€37 million) earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells for the war against Russia, Ukraine's security service reported.
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The SSU said in a statement that five people have been charged, with one person detained while trying to cross the Ukrainian border. If found guilty, they face up to 12 years in prison.
According to the statement, The SSU Military Counterintelligence uncovered this scheme in December 2023, then were able to detain a directorate head in the Minstry of Defence.
The investigation revealed that the official had "tried to misappropriate budget funds allocated for state military orders."
"The perpetrator organised a transfer of almost 1.5 billion Hryvinias (some €39 million) from the Ministry of Defence balance sheet to foreign accounts of an affiliated intermediary company to buy artillery shells," according to the SSU.
This amount was 30 percent higher than the value of an alternative contract concluded by the newly created Defence Procurement Agency.
Ukraine's SBU security service said it uncovered a $40 million corruption scheme in the purchase of arms by the country's military https://t.co/zfsiCdU6i0 pic.twitter.com/YF21CdrTIU
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 28, 2024
After receiving payment, company employees were supposed to transfer the funds to a business registered abroad, which would then deliver the ammunition to Ukraine.
However, the goods were never delivered and the money was instead sent to various accounts in Ukraine and the Balkans, investigators said.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general says that the funds have since been seized and will be returned to the country's defence budget.
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The investigation comes as Kyiv attempts to clamp down on corruption in a bid to speed up its membership in the European Union and NATO.
Officials from both bodies have demanded widespread anti-graft reforms before Kyiv can join them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected on an anti-corruption platform in 2019, long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Both the president and his aides have portrayed the recent firings of top officials, notably that of Ivan Bakanov, former head of the State Security Service, in July 2022, as proof of their efforts to crack down on graft.
Meanwhile, France announced last week that it planned more deliveries of its Caesar artillery system to Ukraine while at the same time accelerating weapons manufacturing to avoid depleting its own military stocks.
"The logic of ceding materiel taken from the armies’ stocks is reaching its end," the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview with French daily Le Parisien. "From now on, the solution is to directly connect French defence industries with the Ukrainian army."
France also launched a drive to fund the delivery of 78 Caesar self-propelled 155 mm howitzers to Ukraine this year.
Ukraine has already paid for six of the guns itself and France will provide €50 million to deliver 12 more, Lecornu said separately in a speech. France is also seeking €280 million from other allies of Ukraine to pay for the 60 other Caesars, the minister said.
(With newswires)
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