The Security Service of Ukraine exposed entrepreneurs who supplied the Armed Forces with defective mines worth almost 270 million hryvnias

Military counter-intelligence officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) exposed a corruption scheme: enterprises supplied defective artillery mines to the Armed Forces of Ukraine under a contract worth almost 270 million hryvnias. This happened on the eve of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation.

According to the investigation, the heads of three private companies that received an order from the Ministry of Defense for the production of mines are involved in the scheme, SBU press service writes. While the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) reports that the situation is connected with the heads of two enterprises.

According to the contracts, the entrepreneurs were supposed to ship the mines by February 2022. However, by this time, the companies had delivered to the Ministry of Defense only a part of the mines, which turned out to be defective due to poor-quality gunpowder. They cannot be used, because such a lack leads to the breakdown of artillery weapons.

Specialists of the Ministry of Defense noticed that the mines were defective during the tests. The batch was returned to the manufacturing companies for processing. The entrepreneurs have still not eliminated the technical malfunctions of the mines and have not supplied the Ukrainian defenders with any of them.

Two heads of companies — a spouse — were informed of suspicion of large-scale fraud (Part 4, Article 190 of the Criminal Code). An investigation is ongoing to bring all those involved to justice.

• The director of the Kyiv firm was suspected of low-quality uniforms for the Armed Forces — losses of 35 million hryvnias.