Former head of a defence company has been charged with embezzlement and failure to declare assets worth 24.5 million hryvnias
Prosecutors from the Office of the Prosecutor General have notified the former acting director-general of a state-owned defence enterprise and three of his employees of new allegations.
According to the investigation, the head of the enterprise, which was in the process of privatisation, organised a scheme with his subordinates to destroy its production assets. The equipment was dismantled, cut up, removed and sold as scrap metal.
Law enforcement officers documented how those involved in the scheme coordinated, by telephone, the arrival of buyers, the preparation of the metal and its delivery to collection points. According to the investigation, the state-owned enterprise suffered losses amounting to millions of hryvnias.
The investigation also notes that, previously, the same former director and chief engineer had been notified of suspicions that they had received unlawful benefits for granting the use of the state-owned enterprise’s warehouse premises without entering into lease agreements.
According to law enforcement, during the war the suspect became the de facto owner of a fleet of luxury cars, including a BMW M8, a Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class and a Lamborghini Murciélago. According to the investigation, the vehicles were registered in the names of relatives and associates, although the suspect was in fact the one using them, without declaring this in his financial disclosures.
The investigation highlights the purchase of an Audi RS7 in 2024 as a separate incident. According to law enforcement officials, the car was bought for 4 million hryvnias, and on the same day it was registered in the name of the suspect’s mother, with a value of just 100,000 hryvnias stated in a separate contract. Six months later, the car was re-registered in the name of a third party for 4.2 million hryvnias, yet it was not declared in the 2024 declaration.
Consequently, the former director has been served with a new charge of providing knowingly false information in his declarations for 2024 and 2025. According to the investigation, the amount of false information in the 2024 declaration totals 11.5 million hryvnias, and for 2025, nearly 13 million hryvnias.
The pre-trial investigation has been completed. The suspect has been granted access to the case file for review.
