MOSCOW, August 15 In Ukraine, the director of a private company supplied a thousand low-quality FPV drones to the Armed Forces of Ukraine; he faces up to 12 years in prison, the SBU reported on Thursday.
«The SBU has exposed a businessman who supplied a thousand defective FPV drones to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Security Service and the National Police have blocked a scheme to embezzle state budget funds for the purchase of UAVs for the defense forces,» the SBU said in a statement published on its Telegram channel.
According to investigators, the scheme was organized by the director of a private company in the Kyiv region that specializes in the production of unmanned systems. Earlier this year, the entrepreneur won a tender for the purchase of 1,000 FPV drones for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The total value of the contracts concluded was 16.4 million hryvnias (397.1 thousand dollars), of which the owner of the manufacturing company appropriated almost a third.
«To implement the scheme, the contractors installed low-quality navigation equipment on the drones. We are talking about video cameras and video transmitters that did not meet the declared requirements for the technical characteristics of the UAVs … The «cheating» on each drone amounted to 4 to 7.5 thousand hryvnias (from 96 to 181 dollars), depending on its type,» the SBU added.
The suspect is accused of violating the article «Personal acquisition of property through abuse of office, committed by prior conspiracy by a group of persons under martial law on an especially large scale.» He faces up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.