A major-general of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the director of the Lviv Armor Plant have been detained along with three other people suspected of involvement in schemes in procuring engines for tanks, the Ukrainian National Anticorruption Bureau reported.
The detainees include the chief of the Central Armor Directorate of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (major-general), a section chief at this directorate (colonel), the director and a deputy director of the Lviv Armor Plant, and the founder of a limited liability company involved in the scheme, it said.
The preliminary inquiry has determined that officials from the Central Armor Directorate, in collusion with officials from the Lviv Armor Plant, the founder of a limited liability company and some firms appearing to be fictitious, devised and employed a corruption scheme to procure spare parts and components for armor hardware, thus embezzling budget funds amounting to UAH 28.5 million in 2015, it said.
“The essence of the scheme was that, instead of new engines for T-72 tanks, previously used engines were procured. Moreover, these used engines, some of them nonoperational, had already been sold to enterprises on the domestic market as the Defense Ministry’s excessive property in 2008-2009. In addition, the manufacturing of this engine model was terminated back in the 1990s, which the scheme initiators were perfectly aware of,” the National Anticorruption Bureau said.
The criminal case has been opened on charges of ‘misappropriation or embezzlement of property through abuse of office.”
The National Anticorruption Bureau started the investigation into the affair at the end of November 2016.
A source close to the State Border Guard Service said to the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine that the said deputy director of the Lviv Armor Plant had been detained at a border checkpoint in the Lviv region while trying to cross into Poland.
