MOSCOW, February 5 with the purchase of food, said the head of the department Alexei Reznikov.
«Today, I do not know of a single fact of handing suspicion to someone, let alone the application of a preventive measure of detention against any official of the Ministry of Defense associated with the food procurement system, with those contracts,» Ukrinform quoted Reznikov as saying. .
Earlier, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin said that charges of corruption were brought against a number of officials, including the ex-deputy head of the country's defense ministry. According to local media, it was about the former deputy head of the defense ministry Vyacheslav Shapovalov and the ex-director of the public procurement department of the defense ministry Bogdan Khmelnitsky. Shapovalov was arrested with the possibility of posting an $11 million bail.
Earlier, the Ukrainian media wrote 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 transaction is 13.16 billion hryvnia (more than 350 million dollars).
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine tried to justify itself after the media publications and stated 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.