Yet another corruption scheme has been uncovered in Ukraine by Western-backed anti-graft agencies, with the country still reeling from the news of a massive $100 million graft scandal linked to Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle.
The $1.4 million racket was made public by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), which said on Friday that – together with the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) – it had uncovered crimes related to the illegal sale of the main maintenance facility at the port of Chernomorsk, a town located to the south of Odessa on the Black Sea coast.
The scheme dates back to 2020, when the then interim director conspired to sell off the facility despite a moratorium, the agency said. The official colluded with an appraiser, lowering the facility’s value artificially from an estimated $1.4 million to a mere $150,000.
The property was subsequently illegally auctioned off to the interim directors’ co-conspirator for some $320,000, according to NABU. Moreover, nearly all the funds the port received from the shady sale ended up siphoned under the pretext of servicing two vessels – which were at the time nowhere near Chernomorsk and were likely in India.
The appraiser and the ex-interim director of the port have been detained, NABU said. Several other individuals involved in the transactions have received “notices of suspicion.”
The new scandal comes atop a massive $100 million graft scheme uncovered in a high-profile probe into a crime ring allegedly led by a former business associate of Zelensky, Timur Mindich, announced by NABU last week. According to the investigators, the group siphoned some $100 million from state-owned nuclear power operator Energoatom, which has been heavily reliant on Western funding.
Multiple high-profile individuals have been implicated in the affair, including the head of Zelensky’s office, Andrey Yermak, former defense minister and current head of the National Security Council, Rustem Umerov, and former Deputy PM Aleksey Chernyshov. The scandal has badly hit the country’s energy sector, prompting Justice Minister German Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svetlana Grinchuk to resign.
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