Ministry of Defence reveals details of scandalous purchase of jackets for Ukrainian Armed Forces
Members of the Anti-Corruption Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament discussed the details of purchasing clothing sets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Source: Ukrainska Pravda correspondent at a meeting of the anti-corruption committee under the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (the parliament)
Details: On Wednesday, 23 August, a meeting was held, with representatives of the Ministry of Defence and law enforcement agencies invited. However, Oleksii Reznikov, Defence Minister, did not appear. Denys Sharapov, Deputy Minister, spoke on behalf of the authoritative body.
During the meeting, MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak, who headed the investigative commission of the Verkhovna Rada on the facts of corruption in the Ministry of Defence, said that according to the commission, the scheme of a broken invoice was involved in the purchase history.
Zhelezniak showed an invoice from the Turkish customs office database, which shows the price of jackets and trousers for the Ukrainian military. This price is three times smaller than that in the documents of the Ministry of Defence.
Zhelezniak says this gap attracted the attention of customs officers in Moldova at the stage of the first delivery in autumn 2022, and then, the trucks were detained. But later, they were released at the request of the Ministry of Defence.
Deputy Minister Denys Sharapov said that the Ministry of Defence did not have such an invoice, which dates to the day the agreement was signed. At the same time, the Defence Ministry could not have known that the supplier bought uniforms in Türkiye at a lower price than it sold in Ukraine.
Representatives of the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces of Ukraine say 75,000 sets of this uniform are currently in stock, and the military has another 120,000 sets at their disposal.
Sharapov showed one of the sets, but the members of the committee doubted it was a kit from the specified delivery.
Separately, the committee members had questions about the supplier selection procedure because there are signs that the company Vector Avia Hava Araçlari was created specifically for this delivery, and its founder left Ukraine within 22 years and was physically unable to sign documents in Ukraine, although the signatures are there.
The meeting of the Anti-Corruption Committee was suspended.
Background:
- Zhelezniak was outraged by Reznikov's words that the alleged investigation into winter jackets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not correspond to reality and that the invoices published in the media were "fiction."
- On 10 August, the publication ZN.UA reported that in 2022, the Turkish company sold summer jackets for the Armed Forces of Ukraine posing them as winter ones.
- ZN.UA has a package of accompanying documents for one of the consignments from Vector Avia. They show how 4900 jackets with a total value of US$142,000 turn into 4,900 jackets for $421,000. Somewhere on the road between Turkish and Ukrainian customs, jackets magically turned from "camouflage" into "winter air protection" and, in this transformation, gained national weight from US$29 to US$86 apiece.
- On 10 August, Ukrainska Pravda, with reference to sources in the government, reported that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was looking for a replacement for Oleksii Reznikov as Defence Minister. At least two candidates were considered.
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