A private company supplied the Ukrainian Armed Forces with unusable mines worth nearly €60 million

Law enforcement has uncovered a corruption scheme involving the procurement of unusable mortar mines for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, through which the perpetrators allegedly obtained nearly 3 billion hryvnias (€59.8 million) in budget funds.

This was reported by the press service of the Office of the Prosecutor General on its Facebook page.

According to investigators, a private company signed five state contracts with the Ministry of Defense’s Department of Military-Technical Policy, the Defense Procurement Agency, and the command of the AFU Logistics Forces to supply mines of various types. Some of the products were delivered, but forensic examinations found them unfit for use and dangerous. Another portion of the deliveries never took place, even though advance payments had been made.

“The total amount of damage caused to the interests of the state under all contracts, according to preliminary estimates, amounts to 2.994 billion hryvnias, of which 571.3 billion hryvnias is damage resulting from the delivery of unusable mines, and 2.423 billion hryvnias is damage resulting from the possible misappropriation of advance payments. Several state customers have filed lawsuits seeking recovery of funds, fines, and penalties,” the agency said. (The figure “571.3 billion” is translated as written in the original text.)

The investigation also established the involvement of a co-contractor—an enterprise that was supposed to load munitions with explosives and assemble the items from supplied materials. More than 120 million hryvnias in advance payments were transferred to the co-contractor’s accounts for work that had not been completed by the specified date, while the supplier company essentially did not pursue claims or demands regarding non-performance.

As part of the investigation, 10 people were notified of suspicion, four of whom were detained. Among the suspects are representatives of the private supplier company, its management, its accounting department, the head of the co-contractor enterprise, and officials from military representative offices.