SSU, State Bureau of Investigation and National Police have uncovered further four ’evasion’ schemes in various regions of Ukraine. PHOTOS
The Security Service, the State Bureau of Investigation and the National Police have uncovered four new schemes to evade mobilisation and detained seven organisers of these schemes in the Kharkiv, Kirovohrad and Vinnytsia regions.
In exchange for money, the traffickers helped those liable for military service to avoid conscription in various ways, including through forged medical certificates, fictitious employment and fake training, reports Censor.NET.
Some of the organisers smuggled their ‘clients’ abroad, bypassing checkpoints.
Kharkiv region
In Kharkiv, the Security Service, in collaboration with the State Bureau of Investigation, exposed an official at the headquarters of one of the National Guard battalions who, for 8,000 dollars, had fictitiously arranged for conscripts to be employed at a construction company designated as a critical infrastructure facility.
After being ‘employed’, the clients hoped to travel abroad unhindered under the pretext of business trips.
Also in the Kharkiv region, SBU officers detained a psychiatrist – the former head of the local branch of the now-disbanded Medical and Social Examination Commission (MSEC) – who was selling certificates of ‘unfitness’ for service to draft dodgers on the basis of fabricated mental illnesses.
In addition, the perpetrator ‘advised’ clients on how to feign mental disorders and intellectual disability during medical examinations.
To carry out the scheme, the suspect used his connections at the district Medical and Social Examination Commission (MSEC) and also enlisted the help of acquaintances who were members of the expert team assessing a person’s daily functioning (the former MSEC).
Kirovohrad region
In the Kirovohrad region, the SBU and the National Police detained the head of a department at a local university who, in exchange for bribes, enrolled draft dodgers in bogus postgraduate programmes, enabling them to obtain deferrals from military service.
The cost of such a ‘service’ was 5,000 US dollars.
Vinnytsia Region
In Vinnytsia region, Security Service officers, in cooperation with the National Police, exposed a further four organisers of a network illegally smuggling draft dodgers out of Ukraine, bypassing checkpoints.
For 12,000 US dollars, the traffickers would escort conscripts to the state border in their own cars and then show them routes for illegally crossing the river by swimming.
SBU officers caught the suspects ‘red-handed’ whilst they were receiving a further bribe from a client.
All those detained have now been notified of the charges against them in accordance with the offences committed under several articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine:
- illegal smuggling of persons across Ukraine’s state border;
- abuse of influence, combined with the solicitation of an unlawful benefit;
- receipt of an unlawful benefit by a public official holding a position of responsibility.
The suspects face up to 10 years’ imprisonment with confiscation of property.
