By KYIV. Dec 23 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Ministry of Defense is working to return funds transferred to an ammunition manufacturer as part of a corruption scheme identified by the SBU and the Ministry of Defense, Illarion Pavliuk, head of the press and information department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said during a telethon on Friday.
“We will return them, we are already working on this. It was a contract under which payment was made, but no deliveries were made. Lawyers are studying these mechanisms, how to properly terminate the contract and return the funds now,” he said.
As previously reported, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Defense discovered an attempted theft in the purchase of artillery shells for the Ukrainian Armed Forces worth UAH 1.5 billion, the SBU press service reported on Friday evening.
“This is an extremely important case when the anti-corruption mechanisms of the Ministry of Defense worked and when we, together with the Security Service, discovered … and very quickly the people who carried out this transaction found themselves in handcuffs,” he said.
Pavliuk also emphasized the “special cynicism” of this deal. “People bought contracted ammunition during the war. They tried to buy it with a 30% markup. And it is important that this could interfere with those contracted supplies that were. Because they offered a more expensive contract to the manufacturer for the same ammunition with a different production rate, smaller,” he said.
According to him, the creation of the Defense Procurement Agency makes such transactions impossible in the future, because the Ministry of Defense is transferring the procurement function.
“And these departments, which in the past generated corruption risks, will now be disbanded,” he noted.
