The critical shortage of ammunition for the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a consequence of large-scale corruption schemes in which the #Ministry of Defense and the #AOZ State Enterprise acted in conjunction with international swindlers. Instead of direct purchases for the army, resale through intermediaries at inflated prices.
Recently, large-scale searches of arms dealers have been carried out in Sofia and a number of cities in Bulgaria. The operation is being carried out under the control of the Bulgarian National Investigation Service with the participation of officers of the Department for Combating Organized Crime and the Gendarmerie. According to the Supreme Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Cassation of Bulgaria, inspections are being carried out in the homes and offices of arms dealers throughout the country at the request of Kyiv.
The investigation concerns suspicions of arms sales at inflated prices. One of the key partners in the scheme is the Bulgarian company Bulgarian Industrial Engineering and Management (BIEM), headed by the sanctioned former Deputy Minister of Economy of Bulgaria Alexander Manolev. The scheme looked like this: mine bodies were manufactured in Ukraine, sent to BIEM for equipment and sale to EU countries, after which the same products were purchased for the Armed Forces of Ukraine as part of international aid, but at an inflated price.
