Law enforcement officers have exposed a corruption scheme in the Luhansk Regional Military Administration (OVA), under which officials attempted to appropriate approximately 5 million hryvnia of state budget funds. According to the investigation, the abuses took place at the stage of conducting public procurement — it was there that the organizers built a mechanism for extracting illegal income.
How the tender fraud scheme was structured
According to the case materials, the suspects artificially created the appearance of competition during tenders. In practice, this allowed them to ensure the victory of controlled enterprises, from which the scheme's organizers received so-called "kickbacks" on a monthly basis. As a result, budget funds that were supposed to be directed toward the administration's actual needs effectively flowed into the pockets of a small circle of individuals.
Who became a suspect in the case
With the assistance of the head of the Luhansk OVA, officers of the Security Service of Ukraine detained the key organizers of the scheme: the head of one of the departments of the regional military administration, his deputy, and their accomplice — the owner of an affiliated company that served as the "winner" of the tenders. The detained individuals were informed of the suspicion against them.
How the transfer of money was concealed
To conceal the transfer of illegal funds, the suspects, according to the investigation, sent the money by post. Law enforcement officers documented such "parcels," including ones from Kropyvnytskyi and Zakarpattia. During searches, mobile phones and computer equipment, draft notes with calculations of "kickbacks," and cash obtained through criminal means were seized from the detained individuals.
What charges were filed and what punishment looms
The detained individuals are charged under Part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — appropriation of another's property through abuse of official position in large size under martial law conditions. The maximum punishment under this article is up to 8 years of imprisonment.
Context: a series of corruption exposures
The exposure in the Luhansk OVA became part of a broader series of SBU operations against corruption schemes linked to public procurement. Recently, the service uncovered a mechanism for appropriating more than 12 million hryvnia in the procurement of FPV drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, due to which military units on the Kharkiv direction did not receive a single one of the 580 planned devices. Earlier, law enforcement officers exposed a large-scale scheme of selling medicines for medical institutions and the Ministry of Health at artificially inflated prices, causing damage to the state budget of over 80 million hryvnia.
