The SBU reported that they are checking five high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defense and weapons suppliers.
The extras in the case are suspected under the article of the Criminal Code on appropriation , embezzlement of property or taking possession of it by abuse of official position.
" The perpetrators tried to steal almost 1.5 billion budget hryvnias for the purchase of 100,000 mortar rounds for the Armed Forces," the security service said.
BBC Ukraine's sources in the law enforcement agencies said that among those involved is the notorious Oleksandr Liev, who was the head of the Department of Military-Technical Policy, Development of Weapons and Military Equipment of the Ministry of Defense.
The current head of this department, Toomas Nakhur, and the head of Lviv Arsenal, Yuriy Zbitnev, were also searched.
According to the security service, one of the persons involved in the case was detained while trying to leave Ukraine, he is currently in custody.
It is about the former head of the Ministry of Defense Department Oleksandr Liev .
Liev himself denied both the accusations of the security forces and the fact that he tried to flee abroad.
In a post on Facebook, he explained that he was going on a business trip to Slovakia to inspect demining machines and planned to return to Ukraine by February 5.
According to the investigation, in August 2022, that is, when the war , the officials signed a contract with Lviv Arsenal for the purchase of a batch of artillery shells.
After receiving the money, the company's management transferred part of the funds to the balance sheet of a foreign company that was supposed to deliver the ordered ammunition to Ukraine.
Deliveries were supposed to start already in December 2022 and be completely finished by the end of February 2023, but as of the end of July, the Ministry of Defense had not received a single mine under the prepaid contract.
The company did not send a single projectile, and transferred the received funds to the accounts of an affiliated structure in the Balkans, the investigators report.
The rest of the amount remained on accounts in one of the Ukrainian banks.
The suspects face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.
Earlier this week, the appeals court confirmed the decision to recover 1.5 billion hryvnias from Lviv Arsenal in favor of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
Ukrainian Pravda wrote in its investigation in July of last year that the Ministry of Defense signed a contract with the little-known Lviv Arsenal company.
The newspaper reported that Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who held this position in 2022, allowed prepayment under the contract (almost 100% of the contract amount), but the Ukrainian military did not receive a single mine under this contract.
Corruption remains one of the most painful problems of Ukraine against the background of the war.
Only a week ago, law enforcement officers detained the son of Lviv businessman Ihor Hrynkevich Roman in Odesa. He is considered the fifth member of the criminal organization, which is suspected of supplying low-quality clothing to the Armed Forces worth UAH 1 billion. The other four suspects in this case were already in custody.
United States government cannot agree on providing military aid to Ukraine.
In August, Volodymyr Zelenskyi dismissed regional military committees due to significant abuses and corruption revealed in the work of shopping mall managers.
In 2022, Ukraine took 116th place out of 180 countries in the 2022 corruption perception rating conducted by Transparency International.
However, Ukraine is one of the 10 countries that have been steadily rising in the Transparency International rating over the last decade.
