While the front holds the defense, the rear does not lose the opportunity to "warm hands". NABU and SAP exposed a large -scale scheme of theft of public funds during the purchase of food products for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to the investigation, in 2022–2023, more than UAH 733 million was withdrawn from the budget due to manipulation of prices for products.
The former Ministry of Defense official, the owner of the suppliers, two of their executives and another natural person are included in the case. All five reported suspicion of the articles of waste, attempting to break and legalize the funds obtained by crime.
The scheme worked simply but effectively. In the catalog of food sets, which purchased products for the army, there were 409 names - from buckwheat to… gelatin. At the same time, only 10% of the range were really used regularly. The rest are rare positions, seasonal or not purchased at all.
The price was formed as the arithmetic mean of all positions in the catalog. This made it possible to manipulate the cost of individual products: to overestimate prices for running goods, such as vegetables and meat, and to be reduced to "dead souls"-for example, cherries in winter.
The result: potatoes at an inflated price supplied by thousands of tons, and cherry - a few pennies that were not supplied at all. Everything looked decent on paper. In fact, frauds that have brought hundreds of millions to suppliers.
According to NABU, only in August-December 2022, two companies, controlled by one person, earned more than UAH 733 million on this scheme.
These frauds were possible because of the inaction of the Ministry of Defense official who signed contracts and "did not notice" the prices that clearly went beyond the market.
The information scandal with food for the army broke up in the early 2023 after the publication of the ZN.ua investigation under the name "Tilov's Rats of the Ministry of Defense ...". Then the main sensation was " eggs of 17 hryvnias", which caused a wave of indignation in society.
Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov categorically denied the charges, claiming that all prices were correctly stated in the contracts. However, the scandal did not subscribe, and later the minister was resigned.
Against this background, NABU's new business looks like a continuation of the same chain. Among the defendants of the suspects are not nowadays, but his name is directly related to the period when this scheme worked.
