Corruption scandals have recently flared up with some abnormal frequency. The media doesn’t even have time to react to them.
But we cannot ignore those scandals that directly affect our defense capabilities. Especially when we are talking about such a grandiose undertaking as the “Army of Drones,” for which a huge amount has been allocated in the state budget - UAH 56.2 billion until the end of next year. And if such influential people as Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Ministry of Digital Development Mikhail Fedorov came under fire from criticism.
Two scandals in one
It all started with a message from NABU and SAP that they had exposed an organized group of six people, which included the head of the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine (Gosspetsvyaz) and his deputy. This group, according to NABU and SAPO, will be in 2021-2022. took possession of public funds amounting to more than UAH 62 million allocated for the purchase of equipment and software.
The Cabinet of Ministers reacted very quickly: on the same day, November 20, it fired the head of the State Special Communications Service Yuri Shchigol and his deputy Viktor Zhora at his own request. Let us clarify that Shchigol has held his position since July 8, 2020, and Zhora since December 28, 2020. Vladimir Zelensky awarded Shchigol the military rank of brigadier general on March 29, 2022.
On November 23, the High Anti-Corruption Court arrested Shchigol for two months with the right to post bail in the amount of UAH 25 million. At the trial, SAP prosecutors reported that Shchigol’s income in recent years amounted to 4.5 million UAH, but six months ago, during a search, not only 82 thousand euros and $72 thousand in cash were found on him, but also a crypto wallet on his phone with a cryptocurrency reserve equivalent to almost $1.5 million. The suspect himself stated in court that this crypto-wallet was in no way connected with him. And that NABU did not know about him six months ago during the searches, but now he suddenly appeared.
Surprisingly: the head of the intelligence agency responsible for information protection says that a crypto wallet with $1.5 million was planted on his phone. In peacetime, one could laugh. But now such “jokes” are annoying.
However, this scandal itself could probably remain an ordinary episode in an everyday crime chronicle. But after it, a second scandal immediately broke out. It was lit by the founder of the “Come Back Alive” charity foundation and the media project Ukrainian Witness (“Ukrainian Witness”) Vitaly Deinega, who from February to September 2023 served as Deputy Minister of Defense for Digital Development, Digital Transformations and Digitalization.
On November 20, Deinega shared his “personal value judgment” about the Shchigol case on his Facebook page. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is important to understand that the head of this service (in my opinion) is just a “pound” who can easily be replaced by another. And that's bad news. But there is also a good one - there is reason to think that this is not the last suspicion, and also the feeling that after some time suspicions await some in this photo, but that will have to wait,” Deinega said and below he placed a photo in which he is next to Shchigol sitting is the Deputy Prime Minister for Innovation, Development of Education, Science and Technology - Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov.
During his seven months of work in the Ministry of Defense, Deinega managed to find out Shchigol’s bureaucratic connections: “The State Special Communications Service has its own lobby in parliament and, in particular (but not only), deputy Alexander Fedienko in the committee on national security, defense and intelligence, which pushed for laws that were beneficial to them, even when the Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian Armed Forces were against it. They have a lobby in the government in the form of many deputies of the Ministry of Digital Development. They have a fairly strong situational alliance with the SBU. They have a lobby in the President’s Office in the form of Mikhail Fedorov.” That is, Fedorov’s deputies are enough to influence the government’s position, and Fedorov himself resolves issues at Bankova.
According to Deinega, he was in continuous conflict with Shchigol throughout his work as Deputy Minister of Defense. And the reason was that Shchigol’s structure was harmful to the army. As Deinega emphasizes, the orders and norms of the State Service for Special Communications, which should increase the security of information in government agencies, in reality “lead to a cosmic rise in cost, technical poverty of solutions and corruption, corruption and once again corruption. Their regulations have the greatest impact on systems that process information with limited access. In fact, because of this, the army cannot be digitalized.”
On November 23, Deinega said that even before his appointment to the Ministry of Defense, he came to Shchigol “and explained that I consider his activities corrupt and harmful to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And that we will change the rules of the game, which lead to the fact that the army is not digitalized, and someone has more crypto in their wallet.” Then, according to him, there were seven months of pressure and, as a result, his dismissal, which (according to his information) “was personally lobbied by Mikhail Fedorov.”
And here we come to the most interesting thing - the money managed by the State Special Communications Service.
Cooler than the SBU and the State Emergency Service
Over the past few months, the telethon has regularly reported on rallies outside the city halls of Kyiv and other cities demanding that money be given to the army. During martial law, such activity (as well as its positive coverage in pro-government media) would have been impossible if it had not been organized by Bankova. This is also evidenced by the fact that activists diligently limited themselves to demands made on city councils and demonstrated complete indifference to similar budget expenditures (for example, on road repairs) by the government and regional state administrations.
This expensive multi-day show was needed in order to justify the law proposed by the Cabinet of Ministers, adopted by parliament on November 8, which retroactively, from October 1 of this year, took away the “military personal income tax” (that is, the personal income tax accrued on the income of military personnel) from territorial communities , police officers and private and commanding officers).
50% of these funds in October-December 2023 and 45% in 2024 will go to the State Special Communications Agency for the “Army of Drones” project, which is supervised by none other than Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Fedorov. By the end of this year, the State Service for Special Communications will receive UAH 12.9 billion for this item of expenditure, and next year - even more than UAH 43.3 billion.
Thanks to this project, the budget of the State Service for Special Communications in 2024 will grow to UAH 50.6 billion and will leave far behind the budgets of such powerful and influential structures as the State Service for Emergency Situations (UAH 43.1 billion) and the SBU (UAH 35.1 billion).
And now it turns out that the reputation of the structure that is supposed to develop all this wealth has been spoiled by a criminal case against its leaders. True, the managers were quickly fired, but there was still room for doubt.
Now two scenarios are possible. One of them looks fantastic because it is described by Deinega, thrown out of the power team.
Deynega claims that with the start of a full-scale war, the State Special Communications Service managed to greatly increase its influence and powers, actually taking over the entire topic of cyber defense (military and civil), as well as drones, and in fact became the “wallet and hands” of the Ministry of Digital Development in many issues. “What was purchased and prices are restricted information. But, according to my information, there is something to investigate,” says the former official. Among the necessary decisions, he named the transfer of drones to the relevant ministries (Ministry of Strategic Industry and Ministry of Defense) and a deep and meticulous audit of procurement for the “Army of Drones.”
Most likely, none of this will happen. This is not why shows were organized at city halls.
A much more realistic scenario is that Bankova will try to suppress this scandal in the media space, as well as influence NABU in order to prevent new scandals that are dangerous for Deputy Prime Minister Fedorov.
The latest personnel decision of Vladimir Zelensky speaks in favor of this scenario. On November 22, he removed Shchigol from the Supreme Commander's Headquarters and brought Fedorov there. That is, Fedorov’s position has not weakened at all, but rather the opposite.
