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Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov – one of the most prominent faces of the war against Russia – is now under fire on the home front as a government corruption investigation rocked the country over the weekend.
Kyiv officials have been at pains during the war to show that the nation is pulling together and cleaning up its act on corruption to chart a course toward the European Union, hence the two investigations at the top level The revelations of corruption have come as a severe blow.
Both inquiries relate to war profiteering, and prompted a pledge of immediate action from President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday night. The case involving the Ministry of Defense involves the purchase of military rations at inflated prices – a topic that has snowballed into top news stories in Kyiv. Almost simultaneously, the deputy infrastructure minister was fired over a case involving excessive public procurement of power generators. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau said it was investigating both cases.
“This week will be the time to take appropriate decisions. I don’t want to announce them right now, but it would be all right. In each situation, we will analyze everything in detail. Issues relating to energy and procurement. Relations between the central government and the regions. Everything related to procurement for the army, ”said Zelensky.
Although Reznikov did not personally sign the 13 billion hryvnia (€326 million) defense food and catering contract, journalists and watchdogs said he had ultimate responsibility and publicly stated zero tolerance for corruption . Reznikov called the allegations a smear campaign aimed at undermining confidence in the Ministry of Defense and its prestige among international partners.
While Reznikov is vigorously defending the ministry’s contract, Vasyl Lozinsky, deputy minister for communities, regions and infrastructure development, was fired almost immediately. National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Reported Deputy minister exposed accepting $400,000 in kickbacks to facilitate purchase of power generating equipment at exorbitant prices.
David Arakhamiya, head of the Servant of the People faction in the Ukrainian parliament affiliated with Zelensky, promised that some corrupt officials could face prison sentences this spring.
“Since February 24, officials at all levels have been repeatedly warned through official and unofficial channels: focus on the war, help the victims, reduce bureaucracy and stop doing questionable business. Many of them have actually heard, but some, unfortunately, haven’t,” Arakhamiya said in a Telegram statement, “If it doesn’t work in a civilized way, it will be done according to wartime laws. This applies to both the recent purchase of generators and the latest scandals in the Ministry of Defense.
food for soldiers scam
Yuri Nikolov, an investigative journalist and founder of Nashi Groshi (Our Money) investigative website that broke the defense purchase story for a Ukrainian news website ZN.UAWants to see action instead of more promises from politicians.
“Now Ukraine has a unique opportunity to show that we are not like Russia, where they launder money on everything. If someone wants to steal millions of euros from us during the war, when our economy is 60 percent European depend on federal assistance, we have to stop that,” Nikolov told POLITICO.
The publicity of Nikolov’s article helped draw attention to the questionable contract before payment, Nikolov claimed.
NABU said it had begun an investigation into the military catering deal even before Nikolov published his investigation.
Nikolov has been investigating corruption related to government procurement for more than 10 years. Like many other Ukrainian journalists, he stopped short of criticizing the Ukrainian government so as not to undermine trust in Ukrainian leaders during a full-scale invasion during the first six months of 2022.
However, since late summer, Nikolov’s sources in the government began alerting him to questionable defense purchases hidden from the public. Then, in December, his sources in the armed forces sent him the hryvnia 13 billion contract on food and catering services that is at the center of the current uproar. The Defense Ministry signed an agreement with a firm affiliated with former defense officers.
According to the contract, Ukrainian military units stationed in the Poltava, Sumy, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv and Cherkasy regions were to receive popular food products at prices two or three times higher than their cost in the market. And those units were deployed far from the front line, where crippling distribution lines could actually make procurement more expensive.
Reznikov publicly accused Nikolov of manipulating its findings and promised to cooperate with lawmakers and law enforcers during the investigation.
price of eggs
He claimed that some of Nikolov’s findings, such as information about inflated prices for eggs, were “a technical mistake made by the contractor, who meant to write the price of eggs in kilos, not per piece.” However, all previous contracts show that the ministry was always buying eggs per piece. Reznikov claimed that the Ministry of Defense managed to introduce competition in the purchase of food grains for the army and has now signed contracts with eight suppliers. Each of those food suppliers and catering teams feed specific military units whether they are deployed to the front or not.
“There are no ‘rear’ or ‘far from the front line’ areas in Ukraine from the point of view of food for the troops. Anyone who claims otherwise is deliberately deceiving,” Reznikov claimed. Therefore, suppliers charge not only for food but also for delivery and catering of “daily ration for a soldier” at a fixed cost within a specified estimated price range, he explained.
“So far, additional internal checks are being carried out on all contracts, military units are checking with catalogs, technical errors are being corrected, additional supply agreements are being drawn up within the proven parameters of the state budget There are,” Reznikov claimed.
The minister said that a person who leaked a copy of the contract to a journalist had committed a crime. He said Ukraine’s security service would investigate the leak and the motives behind it.
In terms of the generator scandal, Lozinsky has yet to comment.
Over the summer, the cabinet allocated 1.68 billion hryvnia (€40 million) for the purchase of power-generating equipment needed to cope with the winter – when Russia is massively bombing energy infrastructure facilities across Ukraine. However, according to NABU, the government officials responsible for the purchase decided to make some extra money on the deal.
“He conspired with a group of middlemen and ensured the conclusion of purchase contracts with pre-determined business entities. NABU said that the cost of the contracts was inflated by 280 million hryvnia (€7 million), which the authorities were able to facilitate at their disposal.” There was a bribe to be paid for.
in a statement Announcing Lozinsky’s dismissal, Ukraine’s Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov promised a comprehensive clean-up.
“I instructed the ministry team to start an inspection of all active projects of the regional ministry, including budget funds, funding from international financial institutions, and technical projects.”