UAH 350 M in armored vehicle spare parts written off in embezzlement scheme uncovered in Kharkiv region
The organizer of a criminal scheme to embezzle military property and a former deputy commander of a military unit in the Kharkiv region has been notified of the charges against him.
According to Ukrinform, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) announced this on Facebook.
The SAPO stated that a pre-trial investigation established that between 2022 and 2024, a group of companies and sole proprietorships—effectively controlled by two individuals—supplied spare parts for armored vehicles worth over 350 million hryvnias to state-owned defense enterprises.
“However, it turned out that some of this property actually already belonged to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and was stored in the warehouses of a military unit in the Kharkiv region. At the start of the full-scale invasion, these spare parts were illegally written off, with records showing they had been destroyed as a result of Russian missile and bomb strikes. In reality, the scarce goods were removed from the unit’s territory and later resold to the state,” the SAPO noted.
The prosecutor’s office stated that the implementation of the criminal scheme was facilitated by the former deputy commander of the military unit, who systematically ignored his duties regarding the accounting and preservation of the property entrusted to him.
“For such loyalty, he received at least 2.8 million hryvnias in illicit benefits from the scheme’s organizer—the businessman directly paid for household equipment, expensive construction materials, and other goods for the military,” the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office noted.
The organizer of the scheme is charged under Article 369(3) (provision of an unlawful benefit); the former deputy commander—under Part 5 of Article 27, Part 4 of Article 410 (theft of military property), Part 4 of Article 368 (receipt of an unlawful benefit), and Article 366-3 (failure to declare) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
The pre-trial investigation is currently ongoing. Other individuals who may be involved in the commission of this crime are being identified.
As reported by Ukrinform, in the Chernihiv region, the military counterintelligence of the Security Service of Ukraine and the State Bureau of Investigations, in cooperation with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, uncovered a scheme to embezzle UAH 11 million in defense funds through the purchase of generators.