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.- 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.
Western-backed anti-graft agencies say they have uncovered more dirty dealings
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.
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