The other day, the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court lifted house arrest from the former head of the Department of Public Procurement and Supply of Material Resources of the Ministry of Defense, Bogdan Khmelnytsky.
The decision was made, as several months ago, by judge Yaroslav Shkodin. In May, the same judge replaced Khmelnitsky's preventive measure with house arrest.
Actually, it was Khmelnitsky, during the time of Defense Minister Reznikov, who directly signed contracts for eggs for 17 hryvnia, and is also a suspect in the case of purchasing low-quality ammunition for the military for 1.4 billion hryvnia and embezzling more than 222 million hryvnia.
Khmelnitsky purchased almost 3,000 body armor for the Ukrainian Armed Forces for more than UAH 100 million. However, according to several independent examinations, these products do not meet the requirements of class IV.
And it was Khmelnitsky who signed contracts for Turkish jackets.
And unlike Reznikov, the director of the department knew exactly why the banks stopped the first payment to the Ministry of Defense for jackets - because it involved a relative of PEP (that is, a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada). It was Khmelnitsky who signed a contract that was not even read and where, instead of clarifying threads, there were some “ducks”.
For a year and a half after the egg scandal, neither the State Bureau of Investigation nor the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine even went so far as to declare suspicions in these cases. Although in the case of body armor and jackets they have already reached the point of announcing short indictments
At the same time, given the increase in the number of people involved in criminal cases walking towards Solotvyno, Ukraine may, at this rate, soon be short of another person involved in high-profile cases.
By the way, the same concern applies to criminal proceedings to disrupt the supply of weapons.
Over the past year, more than one investigation about weapons has been published in the media, but none of them received even approximately the same resonance as jackets or eggs. The main topic raised was the earnings of scam companies by inflating the price of weapons.
Censor.NET decided to look through the court registers and see how things are moving in the two most high-profile investigations - about the transactions of Lviv Arsenal and the Polish company Alfa Sp.zoo
In fact, Alfa Sp.zoo and Lvov Arsenal themselves are shims because they have never been serious players in the arms supply market.
In the case of the Lviv Arsenal, officials of the Ministry of Defense paid 1.4 billion UAH to have 100 thousand mines delivered to them in two months, and did not receive a single one in return. But potential suppliers acquired a gunpowder plant in Bosnia.
At the same time, the price of each unit was higher by at least 2 thousand UAH than in transactions with other companies.
After a number of publications in the press, at the end of January, the former head of the department of military-technical policy, Alexander Liev, the director of the company and several other defendants were finally detained.
According to the case materials, a former employee of the Progress enterprise, Alexey Khoroshaev, and an associate came into contact with the Ministry of Defense and, through friends, persuaded MOU officials to sign a contract with the Slovakian Sevotech as, whose supervisory board at that moment mysteriously included Ukrainians and several Czechs with clearly pro-Russian glances.
After a high-profile arrest, literally a month later Liev was released, and the case itself, which was transferred to NABU, was returned back to the National Police by the decision of the SAPO.
In June, the Pechersk court twice considered the application of a preventive measure against the head of the Lviv Arsenal, Yuri Zbitnev.
First, pointing out that Yuri Zbitnev can “hide from the pre-trial investigation authorities and the court, destroy, hide or distort any of the things or documents that are essential for establishing the circumstances of a criminal offense, interfere with criminal proceedings in any other way, illegally influence witnesses, experts, other suspects in the same criminal proceedings,” law enforcement officers asked him to apply a preventive measure in the form of a bail of 100 million UAH.
The court even partially satisfied such a humane request - setting only 50 million bail, as well as the requirement not to leave Kyiv and wear an electronic bracelet. Zbitnev did not pay bail, so house arrest was already requested for him.
On June 26, the court once again considered the petition of law enforcement officers, agreed with the petition to apply house arrest, but reduced the amount of bail to 42 million. If this somehow reminds you of the story of the former Chairman of the Supreme Court Knyazev, then it is so. Therefore, the bail amount was reduced 7 times until it reached an amount that he could pay using legal means.
On April 24, 2024, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv extended the period of pre-trial investigation in the Lviv Arsenal case to 12 months. Khoroshaev is on the state wanted list.
That's all.
Now about the Alfa Sp.zoo case. We are talking about billions of hryvnias who wanted to make money on weapons. And more than once. The last time a Defense Ministry official was detained for trying to earn 1.5 billion through a Polish connection was in December last year.
The story is this: in April 2022, Alfa Sp.zoo directly offered the Ministry of Defense to supply a certain number of shells. Despite the fact that at that time the company had already disrupted the supply of helmets to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the ministry signed a new agreement with it.
But then something incredible happened and the Ministry signed three more contracts for the supply of 122 and 152 caliber shells with the state special importer, the Progress company, in which the Polish Alfa Sp.zoo was already only an intermediary.
But the price was significantly higher, with a difference of 95 Euros per unit.
If at first the Poles themselves offered a 122 mm HE shell with a full charge for howitzers of the D-30 type for 890 euros, then in the Progress contract they were already 985 euros.
Now NABU is dealing with this case. The materials of the pre-trial investigation indicate that “the purchase of shells at a price of 985 euros per unit of goods according to contract No. 403/1/22/152 dated 04/27/2022 was unfounded.”
In addition, the detective notes that officials of the Municipal Educational Institution and the State Enterprise “NWTF “Progress”, in violation of the regulations in force at that time regulating the procedure for the procurement of goods in the field of defense during martial law, groundlessly agreed and signed an additional agreement on 02/14/2023 agreement No. 6 to the state contract dated April 27, 2022 No. 403/1/22/152, which changed the price goods from 985 to 1318 Euros (per unit of goods).
That is already 428 euros per unit.
This led to damage to the state budget in the total amount of UAH 415,473,804.49, according to the investigation materials. And this is just one contract.
“The detective believes that the above may indicate that officials of the State Enterprise “NWTF “Progress”, acting in prior conspiracy with representatives of the company “Alfa Sp.zoo”, MOU and other unidentified persons, abusing their official position, for the purpose of embezzlement (taking) public funds on an especially large scale, purchased shells at inflated prices, with the aim of obtaining the Alfa Sp. zoo" maximum profit by reducing the economic benefit of the state, with the subsequent distribution of such profit among the participants of the scheme,” the materials note.
The NABU investigation into this case has been going on for more than a year, but some visible signs of it began to appear only in 2024.
For example, the NABU report on searches in Poland related specifically to this case.
In addition, several searches were carried out in Kyiv at this time.
As a result, the property of one of the employees of the Progress enterprise was seized, in particular the iPhone 15 Pro mobile phone.
During the search, a phone was seized from another Ukrainian defendant in the case, which contained correspondence with VMZ (the Bulgarian ammunition plant from which the intermediaries transport most of the ammunition) and Alfa. Another iPhone 15 Pro was seized.
The most interesting thing so far has been found during the third search dated 04/09/2024 - NABU detectives “conducted a search at the place of actual residence of PERSON_4 at the address: ADDRESS_1, during which mobile phones Apple iPhone 11 serial NUMBER_1 and iPhone 14 Plus serial NUMBER_2, a MacBook laptop were found and seized Pro serial number C02RLNUPFVH5, documents in a foreign language, similar to Polish: Krajowy rejest sadowy No. NUMBER_7 for 6 l. (Company registration documents), Bilans and Rachunek zyskow i strat on 6 l. (Balance sheet accounting documents), Strassmayr sp zoo (List of bank accounts) and settlement documents (payments) on 10 sheets, Notebook with handwritten notes (draft notes) in a gray cover with the inscription “Progress”.
The phone and laptops were confiscated.
As part of another search, a phone containing correspondence about the supply of 122 mm Grad ammunition was seized, but a significant number of messages on it were deleted.
However, the author’s attention was attracted not by the list of telephone numbers, but by the mention of the company Strassmayr sp zoo
A Google search indicates that it supplies special equipment.
According to Polish registers, the owners of the company are the Italian MASSENZAS.RL -25% (specializing in the production of bitumen storage tanks) and the Polish PK-EurobudSp.zo.o. -75% (also supplies construction equipment). The last company was founded on July 23, 2018 in Przemysl, its owners are two Ukrainians - Vasyl Klapko and Yuri Vasylyk.
In fact, at the beginning Strassmayr sp zoo was owned by the Poles, but then this company was bought from them.
Now it is difficult to understand where NABU will lead this thread, but it is obvious that part of the money for weapons was washed through gasket companies.
So, last week Kyiv Independent published an article about the work of the Arms Procurement Agency, which is headed by Marina Bezrukova. It talks about the confrontation between the head of the agency and the “gray” market players who are doing everything to ensure that gasket companies maintain their earnings in this market.
And if such cases are not investigated, then such businessmen will not even have any fear that they should not do this.
