Four people, including three police officers, were caught taking bribes from truck drivers operating overloaded vehicles instead of fining them, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) announced on Aug. 30.
Suspects made about $1,000 (Hr 25,000) per day on the scheme since October 2020, according to the investigation. The bribes were allegedly collected in Kherson, a city of 290,000 people located 550 kilometers south of Kyiv.
During the searches, SBU officers confiscated an unspecified amount of cash and bank cards. As of Sept. 1, the SBU detained two suspects while two others remained on the loose.
Overall, about 40% of trucks in Ukraine are overloaded, according to analytics website Slovo i Dilo.
Trucks only represent about 10% of the vehicles on the road in Ukraine but they cause more than 90% of the damage to the roads, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine, told media outlet Novoye Vremya in 2019.
On June 28, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law allowing the government to automatically impose fines via weigh-in-motion systems to prevent overloaded trucks from damaging roads, which Zelensky called a longstanding issue.
The fine for driving an overloaded vehicle ranges from $315 to $1900.
The law mandates the use asphalt sensors that are able to detect overloaded trucks and automatically fine the driver. Only six devices have been installed so far.
Apart from the ones already installed in the main entrances to Kyiv, the government plans to set up 54 more devices throughout the country.
