The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) has chosen preventive measures for two defendants in the case of embezzlement of money from the procurement of products for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
This was reported by the human rights organization Transparency International Ukraine.
Former head of the Department of the Ministry of Defense for Material Support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Bohdan Khmelnytskyi was sent under night house arrest from 00:00 to 06:00.
According to the investigation, it was Khmelnytsky who signed all contracts for the supply of products to the Armed Forces of Ukraine at inflated prices. He also negotiated with another person involved in the case, the former director of one of the supplier companies Mykola Deshpetko.
Another defendant, the head of OK LAND FOOD LLC Larysa Shvets was given a preventive measure in the form of a bail of 1.2 million hryvnias.
She was also ordered to appear at the request of a detective, prosecutor, or court; not to leave Kyiv and the region; to report any change in her place of residence and work; to refrain from communicating with other suspects in the case and witnesses; and to surrender her international passport.
According to the investigation, Shvets, as the head of the supplier company, signed contracts with the Ministry of Defense department that provided for inflated prices for products, and legalized illegally acquired funds.
What preceded
In early January 2023, a scandal erupted around the Ministry of Defense due to the procurement of products at allegedly several times inflated prices (in particular, eggs at 17 hryvnias per one). Against this background, the Ministry of Defense decided to publish information about procurement contracts on its own website, as well as compare prices with market prices.
At the end of January, Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who was responsible for the logistics of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, resigned. It later became known that he, together with the then head of the Defense Ministryʼs department for material support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Bohdan Khmelnytskyi was involved in a case of embezzlement of a billion hryvnias from the budget.
On April 2, 2025, NABU reported that in the case of embezzlement of money from the procurement of products for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, losses of 733 million hryvnias were discovered. Law enforcement officers declared suspicion against Khmelnytskyi, the owner of the supplier companies Tetyana Hlynyana, as well as two managers of the supplier companies and an individual.
The scheme looked like this: during 2022-2023, the army was supplied with food through the purchase of so-called food kits. This provided for the possibility of ordering products according to an approved catalog, the most commonly used, such as vegetables, cereals, meat, water, made up only 10% of the assortment. The rest, such as spices, gelatin or berries, were ordered rarely or never.
The price of the set was formed taking into account all the items in the catalog and was their average cost. This allowed suppliers to manipulate prices: to overcharge them for popular products and undercharge them for little-used products or those that could not be ordered due to seasonality of supply (cherries or apricots in winter). That is, at first glance, there were no violations, and the price of the set did not change. However, potatoes, which were supplied in thousands of tons, were sold at a high price, and seasonal berries and fruits, which were almost never ordered, cost a penny.
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