Journalists unveil Poroshenko's inner circle corruption with military equipment buys from Russia. VIDEO
Nashi Hroshi (Our Money) project journalists have published investigation materials about corruption and embezzlement in Ukraine's defense sector, which involved people from the business environment of President Petro Poroshenko.
Censor.NET reports referring to a corresponding video story.
The journalists claim to have obtained an archive with the correspondence of the participants of the scheme, internal documents, materials about the agreements on bribes according to the scheme, which already emerged as part of another probe a year and a half ago.
According to journalists, in 2015, the son of Deputy Secretary of the Council of National Security and Defense Oleh Hladkovskyi, Ihor, who was 22 at the time, organized together with his partners the supply of smuggled Russian parts for military equipment. Ukraine's state defense enterprises then purchased them from straw firms paying 2 to 4 times higher prices. The management of Ukroboronprom state concern knew about these fraudulent transactions and gave consent to them.
Main participants in the scheme
The probe revealed that the facts indicated in the correspondence match those established earlier.
According to investigators, at the beginning of the Russian aggression in 2014, the participants in the scheme - Hladkovskyi, his son Ihor, former employee of Ukroboronprom Vitalii Zhukov, and the heads of various defense companies - colluded with defense officials.
They bought spare parts for military vehicles from Russian smugglers, as well as from warehouses within the Ukrainian army. Then they significantly raised prices and, acting in collusion with Ukroboronprom state concern, sold them to their own factories. This group quickly became the best supplier for most state-owned factories and started signing million hryvnia contracts.
The probe has established the Hladkovskyi group have received from Ukroboronprom no less than 250 million hryvnia (approx. $9.2 mln). The journalists do not exclude the amount may be significantly bigger.
