Corrupt Ukrainian officials stole almost $40m meant to buy arms for war with Russia, reports

Employees from a Ukrainian arms firm conspired with defence ministry officials to embezzle almost $40 million earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells for the war with Russia, Ukraine’s security service has reported.

The SBU said late on Saturday that five people have been charged, with one detained while trying to cross the Ukrainian border. If found guilty, they face up to 12 years in prison.

The investigation comes as Kyiv attempts to crack down on corruption in a bid to speed up its membership of the European Union and Nato.

Officials from both blocs have demanded widespread anti-corruption reforms before Kyiv can join them.

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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was elected on an anti-corruption platform in 2019, long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Both the president and his aides have portrayed the recent firings of top officials, notably that of Ivan Bakanov, former head of the State Security Service, in July 2022, as proof of their efforts to crack down on corruption.

Security officials say the current investigation dates back to August 2022, when officials signed a contract for artillery shells worth 1.5 billion hryvnias (€36 million) with arms firm Lviv Arsenal.

After receiving payment, company employees were supposed to transfer the funds to a business registered abroad, which would then deliver the ammunition to Ukraine.

However, the goods were never delivered and the money was instead sent to various accounts in Ukraine and the Balkans, investigators said.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general says the funds have since been seized and will be returned to the country’s defence budget.

Meanwhile, three civilians, including a teenage boy, were wounded in an overnight Russian strike in the Donetsk oblast, according to the office of Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

Russian troops launched a rocket attack on a residential area in the city of Myrnograd at about 1.30am, injuring a 15-year-old boy and a 35-year-old man in their own homes. A 30-year-old resident of a neighbouring house sustained a brain injury. The attack damaged 14 apartment buildings and educational institutions and nine cars.

Russian forces launched three missiles, eight drone strikes and 82 shellings on Ukrainian troops and civilian infrastructure over the past day, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in its morning briefing on Sunday.

More than 100 settlements in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts came under fire. – AP/Guardian