The court in Kyiv decided to keep former Deputy Minister of Defense Vyacheslav Shapovalov in custody until November 1 and reduced his bail to 50 million hryvnias.
This is reported by "Suspilne".
The prosecutor insisted on the continuation of detention or on a bail of 97 million hryvnias. According to him, Shapovalov can hide from the investigation and leave Ukraine, because he is an exhibitionist and "acquired social connections."
Shapovalov said that he was no longer working at the time of his arrest. He called the suspicion baseless.
"Article 114 obstruction of the Armed Forces in a special period. It is not possible to prevent the activity that is not carried out. We delivered 15-20 tons of equipment, they cannot travel all over Europe. Hub was in Poland, in Rzeszów. And from there, they delivered goods to Ukraine partially, in batches. Everyone has forgotten what time it was then, these were difficult circumstances in which we worked. At the beginning of the war, we had zero body armor and helmets," he said.
The lawyers claimed that the supplied bulletproof vests had passed the examination. They also insisted that Shapovalov be released from custody. The defense also stated that the exhibitor does not have the funds to pay the 50 million bail, because he earns 375 thousand hryvnias a year.
Where did it all start?
The investigators established that Shapovalov and Khmelnytskyi bought almost three thousand bulletproof vests for over 130 million hryvnias from a foreign company, misappropriating over 100 million of the amount. This happened at the beginning of March 2022. Merchandising expertise revealed that the real market value of bulletproof vests is only 25 million hryvnias, and the quality of the purchased ones does not correspond to the declared protection class.
The SBU claimed that the organizers of the "scheme" bought a wholesale batch of low-quality winter jackets and pants for servicemen for a total of 900 million hryvnias. The clothes also do not meet the necessary requirements.
On June 16, the Security Service of Ukraine notified the former Deputy Minister of Defense Vyacheslav Shapovalov and his subordinate Bohdan Khmelnytsky of suspicion of embezzling more than 1 billion hryvnias from the budget (Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code), as well as of obstructing the activities of the Armed Forces (Part 2 of Article 28 Part 1 Article 114-1 of the Criminal Code).