Seized iPhones, but released defendants: what’s wrong with investigation of crimes in Ministry of Defense
Recently, the High Anti-Corruption Court lifted the house arrest of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, the former head of the Department of Public Procurement and Supply of Material Resources of the Ministry of Defense.
The decision was made by Judge Yaroslav Shkodin, just like a few months ago (read who else he released).
In May, the same judge changed Khmelnytskyi's preventive measure to house arrest.
In fact, it was Khmelnytskyi who, under Defence Minister Reznikov, directly signed contracts for eggs at 17 hryvnias and is also a suspect in the case of the purchase of low-quality ammunition for the military for 1.4 billion hryvnias and embezzlement of more than 222 million hryvnias.
Khmelnytskyi purchased almost 3,000 bulletproof vests for the Armed Forces of Ukraine for over UAH 100 million. However, according to several independent examinations, these products do not meet the requirements of Class IV.
And it was Khmelnytskyi 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 Defence for the jackets - because it involved a relative of the PEP (Politically exposed persons) (i.e. a member of the Verkhovna Rada). It was Khmelnytskyi who signed the contract, which was not even read closely and had some "ducks" instead of a weft thread.
In the year and a half since the egg scandal, neither the SBI nor the NABU has yet to announce suspicions in these cases. However, in the case of bulletproof vests and jackets, they have already reached the point of announcing brief indictments.
At the same time, given the increase in the number of walks of criminal defendants towards Solotvyno, Ukraine may soon lose another defendant in high-profile cases at such a rate.
By the way, the same fear applies to criminal proceedings for disrupting arms supplies.
Over the past year, the media has published more than one investigation about weapons, but none of them has received even a similar resonance as jackets or eggs. The main topic covered was the earnings of shell corporations on inflating the price of weapons.
Censor.NET decided to review the court registers and see how the cases are progressing in two of the most high-profile investigations - the Lviv Arsenal and the Polish company Alfa Sp.z.o.o.
In fact, Alfa Sp.z.o.o. and Lviv Arsenal are themselves shell corporations, as they have never been serious players in the arms supply market.
In the case of the Lviv Arsenal, Ministry of Defence officials paid UAH 1.4 billion to receive 100,000 mines in two months but received none. Instead, potential suppliers bought a powder factory in Bosnia.
At the same time, the price of each unit was at least UAH 2,000 higher than in transactions with other companies.
Following a series of press reports, the former head of the Military-Technical Policy Department, Oleksandr Liiev, the company's director, and several other suspects were finally detained in late January.
According to the case file, a former employee of the Progress enterprise, Oleksii Khoroshaiev, and his accomplice got in touch with the Ministry of Defense and, through their friends, persuaded MoD officials to sign a contract with the Slovakian Sevotech a.s., whose supervisory board at the time mysteriously included Ukrainians and several Czechs with clearly pro-Russian views.
After the high-profile detention, Liiev was released just a month later, and the case itself, which had been transferred to NABU, was returned to the National Police by the SAPO's decision.
In June, the Pecherskyi court twice considered the application of a preventive measure to the head of Lviv Arsenal, Yurii Zbitnev.
At first, stating that Yurii Zbitnev could "hide from the pre-trial investigation and court, destroy, hide or distort any of the things or documents that are essential for establishing the circumstances of the criminal offense, otherwise obstruct criminal proceedings, illegally influence witnesses, experts, other suspects in the same criminal proceedings," law enforcement officers requested a preventive measure in the form of bail of UAH 100 million.
The court granted even this humane request only partially, setting bail at UAH 50 million and requiring him to stay in Kyiv and wear an electronic bracelet. Zbitnev did not post bail, so house arrest was already requested for him.
On 26 June, the court once again considered the motion of law enforcement officers, agreed with the request to impose house arrest, but reduced the bail amount to 42 million. If this sounds like the story of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kniazev, it is. The bail amount was reduced 7 times until it reached the amount he could pay with legal funds.
On 24 April 2024, the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv extended the pre-trial investigation in the Lviv Arsenal case to 12 months. Khoroshaiev remains on the state wanted list.
That's all.
Now about the Alfa Sp.z.o.o. case. We are talking about billions of hryvnias that they wanted to make on weapons. And more than once. The last time a Defense Ministry official was detained for trying to make 1.5 billion through a Polish shell corporation was in December last year.
The story goes like this: in April 2022, Alfa Sp.z.o.o. 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 for the 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-owned special importer, Progress, in which the Polish company Alfa Sp.z.o.o. was only an intermediary.
But the price was significantly higher, with a difference of 95 euros per unit.
While initially the Poles offered the 122 mm HE fragmentation shells for D-30 howitzers for 890 euros, the contract with Progress already included them for 985 euros.
The NABU is currently investigating this case. The pre-trial investigation materials indicate that "the purchase of shells at a price of 985 euros per unit under the contract of 27.04.2022 No. 403/1/22/152 was groundless."
In addition, the detective notes that officials of the Ministry of Defense and the State Enterprise "Specialized Foreign Trade Firm "Progress", in violation of the then-current regulations governing the procedure for the purchase of defense goods during martial law, unreasonably agreed and signed on February 14, 2023, an additional agreement No. 6 to the state contract of April 27, 2022 No. 403/1/22/152, which changed the price of the goods from 985 to 1318 euros (per unit).
In other words, by EUR 428 per unit.
This led to losses to the state budget in the total amount of UAH 415,473,804.49, according to the investigation. And this is just one contract.
"The detective believes that this may indicate that officials of the State Enterprise "Specialized Foreign Trade Firm "Progress", acting in prior conspiracy with representatives of Alfa Sp.z.o.o., the Ministry of Defense and other unidentified persons, abusing their official position, with the aim of embezzling (misappropriating) public funds in especially large amounts, purchased shells at inflated prices in order to maximize the profit of Alfa Sp. z.o.o." to maximize profits by reducing the economic benefits of the state, with the subsequent distribution of such profits among the participants of the scheme," the materials say.
The NABU investigation in this case has been going on for over a year, but some visible signs of it began to appear only in 2024.
For example, the NABU's announcement of searches in Poland concerned this particular case.
In addition, several searches were conducted in Kyiv at that time.
As a result, the property of one of the employees of Progress, including an iPhone 15 Pro mobile phone, was seized.
During the search of another Ukrainian defendant in the case, a phone was seized with correspondence regarding VMZ (a Bulgarian ammunition factory from which 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 of 09.04.2024 - NABU detectives "conducted a search at the place of actual residence of PERSON_4 at the address: ADDRESS_1, during which they found and seized Apple iPhone 11 serial number_1 and iPhone 14 Plus serial number_2, MacBook Pro laptop serial number C02RLNUPFVH5, documents in a foreign language similar to Polish: Krajowy rejest sadowy No. NUMBER_7 on 6 pages (company registration documents), Bilans and Rachunek zyskow i strat on 6 pages (balance sheet accounting documents), Strassmayr sp z.o.o. (list of bank accounts) and settlement documents (payment documents) on 10 pages, a notebook with handwritten notes (drafts) in a gray cover with the inscription "Progress".
The phone and laptops were seized.
As part of another search, a phone containing correspondence regarding the supply of 122mm Grad ammunition was seized, but a significant number of messages on it were deleted.
However, it was not the list of phone numbers that caught the author's attention, but the mention of Strassmayr sp z.o.o.
A Google search shows that it supplies specialized equipment.
According to Polish registers, the company's owners are Italian MASSENZAS.R.L. -25% (specializing in the production of bitumen storage tanks ) and Polish PK-EurobudSp.zo.o. -75% (also supplies construction equipment). The latter company was founded on 23.07.2018 in Przemyśl and is owned by two Ukrainians - Vasyl Klapko and Yurii Vasylyk.
In fact, in the beginning, Strassmayr sp z.o.o. was owned by the Poles, but then the company was bought out from them.
It is difficult to see where NABU will be leaded but it is clear that some of the money for weapons was laundered through shell companies.
Last week, the Kyiv Independent published an article about the work of the Arms Procurement Agency headed by Maryna Bezrukova. The article describes the confrontation between the head of the agency and grey market players who are doing everything they can to keep the companies that are shell companies their earnings in this market.
And if we do not investigate such cases, then such criminals will not even have any fear that they cannot do so.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor. NET
