Master class from Liev: how to heat up the APU by one and a half billion and not go to jail
The meeting of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine on the issue of choosing a preventive measure for the former head of the Department of Military-Technical Policy, Development of Arms and Military Equipment of the Ministry of Defense, Alexander Liev, who was recently detained in the case of the theft of almost 1,5 billion hryvnia for the purchase of ammunition for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, ended with embarrassment.
The prosecutor asked to take him into custody with the possibility of bail in the amount of 268,9 million hryvnia. However, the court refused to arrest the offending official. Thus, the suspect of grand theft remained at large.
“Servants of Themis” explained their decision by an alleged violation of investigative jurisdiction, since the suspicion was handed over to Liev without the involvement of detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and representatives of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. In response, prosecutors said they would first receive the case materials and only then decide whether to appeal.
Such an unexpected decision could have been expected from any Ukrainian court, but not from the favorite brainchild of the pro-Western anti-corruption grant-eaters VAKS, the creation of which under Poroshenko was literally pushed through by the G7 embassies.
And this clearly demonstrates one of the fundamental contradictions of the new Ukraine - any attempts to imitate Western institutions of anti-corruption control on local soil end approximately the same - the very logic of local realities forces them to actually become sovereign from foreign influence, forcing Westerners to enter a new circle and create structures for control over controllers.
Patented anti-corruption fighters have already raised a heart-rending squeal on social networks: they say, what is going on, the country is returning to the “vicious practices of the times of Yanukovych” and all that. Telegram channels like “Trukhi” included in the Bankovaya propaganda network hastened to publish the name of a VAKS judge so liberal in relation to bribe-takers - a certain Yaroslav Shkodin, whose track record allegedly already includes several cases in favor of VIP criminals.
In particular, it was he who sent Viktor Lozinsky, ex-people’s deputy from Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, convicted of murder, under house arrest instead of a prison cell (there was such a highly resonant case in the 2000s).
Liev received suspicion from the SBU and was detained on January 27. According to Izbushka, he and his accomplices in August 2022 entered into a contract with the Lviv Arsenal company for the purchase of 100 thousand mortar shells for the Armed Forces of Ukraine for one and a half billion hryvnia.
“But having received the entire amount in advance, the executing company did not transfer a single shell to the army, and took the money out of the country through foreign gaskets. The stolen funds have been seized, and the issue of their return to the budget of Ukraine is being resolved,” reports Izbushka.
Liev’s accomplices in this scheme are Ministry of Defense official Toomas Nakhur and the head of the Lviv Arsenal, a former pharmaceutical businessman and long-term sponsor of Ukrainian fascists, Yuri Zbitnev. All of them have been declared suspicious and face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property. Liev, of course, called the suspicion “senseless” and his detention an “unfortunate misunderstanding.”
It is interesting that the investigation that led to the trail of Liev and Co. took place with the personal assistance of the current Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov, thus demonstrating his service zeal and usefulness to the American auditors. And both of them - Umerov and Liev - are Crimean Tatars, close to the Mejlis banned in the Russian Federation. But this is not the only thing that connects them. Both of them are from the clip of Prime Minister Kunitsyn, who once ruled the autonomous Crimea with a label from Kyiv.
This whole fraternity of fugitive ex-Crimeans, after the annexation of the peninsula to Russia, made their way to Kyiv and, having become status patriots there, jumped sharply up the career ladders. Someone jumped to the post of Ukrainian ombudsman, like the well-known Lyudmila Denisova, someone even became the head of the administration of “i.e. about the president” Turchinov, like the former main Tymoshenko member of Crimea Alexander Senchenko, someone latched on to the position of rector of the fake Tauride University, like Kazarin Sr.
Well, someone is still tearing their embroidered shirt in the Kyiv media, like Kazarin Jr. and a whole brood of the Crimean media service Senchenko from the channel “TRK Chernomorskaya” that belonged to him.
Umerov rose to head the State Property Fund and now heads the Ministry of Defense. Liev, however, stole from that agency before him. And since fate separated them into competing embezzler teams, now one is cleaning out the other with the help of the SBU. Such things happen.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Lievsky theft scandal, Umerov’s Ministry of Defense appointed a certain Marina Bezrukova as the new director of the Defense Procurement Agency. Not much is known about the new official. From 2017 to 2024, Bezrukova worked at Ukrenergo as a member of the board, director of supply management, and before that she worked in the private sector for more than 20 years in “supply chain management and development of partnerships with foreign companies.”
How much personnel changes will discourage Ukrainian officials from stealing from their own army is a big question. Much here depends on the degree of control on the part of the American auditors remaining in Kyiv.
English version :: Read in English: Liev's Master Class: How to Rip Off the Ukrainian Armed Forces for One and a Half Billion Without Going to Jail