You're reading: Prosecutors: Corrupt Ukrainian officials on border with separatist territories sell passports, help draft dodgers

Corrupt Ukrainian officials on the border with separatist-controlled territories are imperiling the nation's war against Russian-backed separatists, according to a statement by the Prosecutor General’s Office.

“A range of illegal and corrupt actions by officials of the armed forces of Ukraine, other military units, law enforcement agencies involved in anti-terrorism operations in Donetsk and Luhansk, and local officials has been uncovered,” the Prosecutor General’s Office announced in a statement on May 25.

During an operation with the Security Service of Ukraine from May 21-23, military prosecutors arrested the head of the migration service in an undisclosed city in the Donetsk Oblast for selling Ukrainian passports to residents of Russian-controlled territories in Ukraine, the statement said.

The unidentified suspect, arrested on May 23, had been charging Hr 8,000 for each passport, according to the statement. It was unclear how many passports he had sold.

An information request sent to the Migration Service on the matter was not immediately answered.

In a more alarming incident, the commander of a mechanized infantry battalion faces up to eight years in prison for bribing another official to help him move loaded vehicles into occupied territory.

It was unclear what the vehicles contained and where they were placed.

A senior officer managing a military enlistment office in the Donetsk Oblast was also arrested as part of the sting operation. He’d allegedly accepted a Hr 12,000 bribe to help a man dodge military service.

Vladislav Seleznev, spokesman for the armed forces, was not immediately available for comment on the allegations.

The Ukrainian government introduced a strict permit system on the border with separatist-controlled territories for safety reasons, to prevent separatists from transporting illegal goods or carrying out acts of sabotage in Ukrainian territory.

Hennadiy Moskal, head of the neighboring Luhansk Oblast, has repeatedly sounded the alarm over corruption at these Ukrainian-controlled checkpoints into the Russian-controlled areas of Luhansk.

“When we were stopping trucks (carrying contraband), the drivers would often just be sitting there, frying eggs, resting. We’d ask ‘Why aren’t you going?’ And they’d honestly answer, ‘We’re waiting for our shift at the checkpoint,” Moskal said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists on May 22.

According to the Luhansk governor, it’s a common practice for contrabandists to pay off guards at the checkpoints, who look the other way when the contrabandists transport large truckloads of alcohol, cigarettes and other products into rebel-controlled territories.

Moskal described an elaborate system of corruption, in which passwords are used to secure passage without any questions or searches of the vehicle.

“Even as the governor, I don’t know these passwords. But the contrabandists know all of them,” he said in comments carried by the Liga.Novosti news portal.

Here is the prosecutor’s statement