More than 2,600 state and law enforcement officials were in the focus of investigators of the State Bureau of Investigation. All because of suspicion of fictitious installation of disability groups, which allowed to receive monthly pension payments from the state budget. Among the persons - prosecutors, security forces, officials.
Investigators have already removed cases from medical and social expert commissions (MSEC), accounting journals, documents and certificates that may indicate abuse during the establishment of the status of "disabled".
According to the DBR, some of the diagnoses raises direct doubts about their truth. In a number of cases, it is the establishment of a second disability group for life for employees who at the time of registration did not have functional violations that fall under legitimate criteria.
The investigation has already produced the result: two leaders of district prosecutors in the Khmelnytsky and Cherkasy regions were suspected. According to the DBR, both in 2020 were falsified documents to issue a disability pension, and have already received UAH 1.07 million and UAH 477 thousand respectively. They are now threatened with responsibility for fraud in particularly large sizes (Article 190 of the Criminal Code) and removal from positions.
But prosecutors are just the top. The remaining more than two thousand cases are still analyzed. The Ministry of Health is involved in the inspections, including the Institute of Medical and Social Disability Problems, which now performs the functions of control of MSEC decisions.
The key point: in most cases, the disability group was given not just for reference, but became the basis for monthly pensions or release from mobilization. And this is during a full -scale war.
Equally indicative is another fact: in some regions the full journals of MSEC meetings have already been seized, which recorded dozens of similar “preferential” decisions. According to sources, such "services" were often accompanied by cash rewards, and the doctors themselves acted by prior agreement with officials.
This is not the first case of investigation of such schemes. In March in the Kyiv region they will be tried by Acting MSEC chairman, which demanded a bribe for disability. And last fall, President Zelensky personally initiated the elimination of the old MSEC system.
From January 1, 2025, a new model of expertise has been launched in Ukraine - the assessment of the functional condition. But in fact, complaints are considering one center in the Dnieper, and to get there with disabilities - a separate story.
Despite the new system, the old corruption model is still painful in the budget. Investigators have already reported that more than UAH 1.5 million has been caused by one budget. And there are hundreds of inspections ahead and, probably, dozens of new suspicions.
If systemic violations are confirmed, it will be one of the largest schemes for theft of social funds in the history of MSEC.
