In the midst of a full-scale war, when state-owned companies were operating in emergency logistics mode, moving strategic fuel reserves to safer regions, a contractor found himself alongside Ukrnafta, who saw the war not as a threat, but as an opportunity for enrichment. Now this story has reached the courts.
Prosecutors from the Attorney General's Office have filed an indictment against a director of a private company, who is accused of embezzling funds from a state-owned oil company, tax evasion, and official forgery.
In 2023, Ukrnafta signed a contract with a private company for the transportation and forwarding of petroleum products using the access railway. Wartime conditions — unstable routes, constant movements, time constraints, and limited control capabilities — created an environment in which paper abuses could go unnoticed.
According to the investigation, this is exactly what the director of the contractor company was counting on. The scheme was as simple as possible and at the same time effective. The accused systematically submitted to Ukrnafta certificates of work performed with knowingly false information about the arrival and stay of fuel wagons at the railway station.
In reality, these cars never arrived there. Railway accounting data and criminal proceedings confirm that a significant part of the transportations indicated in the documents existed solely on paper. The services were fictitious, and the acts were a tool for legalizing the write-off of funds.
Despite this, the state-owned company transferred money for the “provided” freight forwarding services. Payments were made in the usual manner — formally the documents looked correct, but in wartime conditions their content could not always be checked promptly. As a result, the amount of losses incurred by Ukrnafta exceeded 16 million hryvnias.
In parallel with this scheme, the director of a private company, according to the investigation, implemented another area of abuse - tax evasion. For this purpose, fictitious contracts were concluded with controlled enterprises, which allowed artificially forming a VAT tax credit without actually carrying out business transactions. Document circulation created the illusion of active activity, while in fact it was a banal understatement of tax liabilities.
In the end, law enforcement officers describe this story as a classic example of rear-end looting: war is used as a cover, strategic fuel as a resource for enrichment, and accounting and fictitious acts as the main tool of the crime. Without complex financial structures, but with precise calculation of the overload of the system in wartime.
Now the case has moved beyond offices and accounting reports and into the courtroom. The key question is not only the amount of damages, but whether this trial will become a signal to others who have tried or are trying to profit from the war, hiding behind "logistics" and paper schemes.
