MOSCOW, February 1 Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andrey Kostin said, that on Wednesday charges were brought against a number of officials, including the ex-deputy head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
«The ex-Deputy Minister of Defense was informed of a suspicion of obstructing the legitimate activities of the armed forces of Ukraine and other military formations during a special period. He lobbied for the conclusion of agreements on the supply of products for the military at inflated prices, the purchase of bulletproof vests and other low-quality items,» Kostin wrote. in the Telegram channel. The surname of the ex-deputy head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is not called by the Prosecutor General's Office. According to Kostin, the Prosecutor General's Office also filed charges against the former acting director. Director of the Department of Public Procurement and Supply of Material Resources of the Ministry of Defense on the fact of embezzlement of funds, as well as «organizing the purchase of low-quality bulletproof vests.»
Earlier, Ukrayinska Pravda, citing law enforcement sources, reported that on Wednesday the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine accused ex-director of the public procurement department of the Ministry of Defense Bohdan Khmelnytsky and former deputy head of the Ministry of Defense Vyacheslav Shapovalov of corruption after a scandal with procurement in the department.
Ukrainian media have previously reported that the Ukrainian Defense Ministry buys products for the military twice or three times more expensive than they can be purchased in retail stores in Kyiv. The investigation dealt with an agreement concluded by the department for catering services in 2023 for military units stationed in the Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Poltava, Sumy, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions. The amount of the deal is 13.16 billion hryvnias (more than $350 million).
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry tried to justify itself after media publications and said that this information «is being disseminated with signs of deliberate manipulation and is misleading.» Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov explained the inflated food prices as a «technical error». However, after the scandal, Shapovalov and Khmelnitsky were dismissed from their positions.