Officials from Ukraine’s defense production concern UkrOboronProm siphoned off at least 600,000 euros to a Cyprus offshore company during a corrupt arms deal, according to Sergii Leshchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and anti-graft activist.
In his blog on the Ukrainska Pravda media outlet website, the politician claimed on July 4 that in April 2017, the Impulse factory, a military production plant affiliated with UkrOboronProm, sold 109 ignition and detonator primers for artillery shells for 95,000 euros to a Cyprus-based offshore company, PH Strategic Business Limited.
Later, however, the military hardware was purchased by a Serbian company, Sloboda, for almost 684,000 euros, a price that exceeded the initial Ukrainian one by seven times, Leshchenko said.
The lawmaker attached copies of invoices as evidence of the reality of the deals between all of the parties mentioned in the post.
“This is a typical example,” Leshchenko wrote. “But it demonstrates the scale of the degradation of the corrupt system.”
“The whole industry of military production cooperation is deeply secretive, formally for preserving ‘defense secrets,’ but in reality for the sake of the multi-million (dollar) ‘tips’ generated by this industry for the state’s leadership.”
The lawmaker has repeatedly accused Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of ignoring large-scale corruption in defense sector, along with directly benefiting from it. And despite heavy criticism and multiple graft scandals, Oleh Gladkovskiy, Poroshenko’s long-time business partner, remains the deputy chairman of Ukraine’s Defense and Security Committee, which effectively sets the agenda for the country’s military production.
A major automobile corporation owned by Gladkovskiy, the Bohdan Group, is among the largest defense procurement contractors in Ukraine.
UkrOboronProm’s former director general, Roman Romanov, Poroshenko’s long-time political ally and business partner, resigned after a series of nationwide corruption scandals in early 2018. His resignation allegedly came after Ukraine’s international partners exerted heavy pressure on the Ukrainian administration.
However, Leshchenko said UkrOboronProm’s deputy director, Svitlana Khromets, who had also come from Gladkovskiy’s Bohdan Group, is still in her job.
In early April 2018, the case of the allegedly fraudulent sale of the shell primers was also described by Novoye Vremya magazine, along with several other allegedly corrupt schemes run by officials. The publication accused the Ukrainian lawmaker and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for National Security and Defense Serhiy Pashynskiy of masterminding corrupt multi-million dollar deals in the country’s military procurement and foreign arms sales sectors.
In response to the allegations, the politician and UkrOboronProm sued Novoye Vremya.
