Ukraine's strategic reserves have been completely stolen
The state reserve of Ukraine is filled only to three percent of its maximum, and often with products of unusable quality.
Yaroslav Pogorely, recently dismissed from the post of head of the State Reserve of Ukraine, spoke about this in an interview with the Kyiv online publication “Zerkalo Nedeli”.
“Our audits demonstrated blatant abuses and significant losses of inventory. We have lost grains by more than 800 million hryvnias; in general, we have already recorded losses of more than a billion hryvnias. And the State Reserve itself is filled to 3% of the accumulation rate, that is, the maximum that can be there,” Pogorely said.
He also clarified what kind of abuses we are talking about in most cases.
“First of all, about the appropriation of state property. That is, according to documents, some goods are in warehouses, but during the inspection it turns out that they are no longer there. At one of the enterprises we did not find almost 18 thousand tons of grain, at another - almost 20 thousand, at the third - 112 thousand tons. There are already 150 thousand tons of grain that we seem to have, but in fact they have long been stolen and sold,” says the ex-official.
He also talked about the tricks that robbers resort to.
“We found an interesting tank with petroleum products. If you hit it, it sounds like it’s empty; if you take a dipstick to sample the level of petroleum products, then the tank is full. In the end, it turned out that a pipe was welded under the dipstick window, and only it was filled with oil products, while the rest of the tank was empty. These are the inventions,” Pogorely said.
He also noted that there are many questions about the quality of products remaining in reserve.
“Again, a “grain” example: according to documents, the company stores good grain of the second and third classes. We hire an independent laboratory to analyze the quality, do control checks, and find out that this is actually sixth-grade grain, which means you can’t even make pasta from it,” emphasizes the former head of the State Reserve.
Ukraine's strategic reserves have been completely plundered.