Multimillion-dollar haul as Ukraine raids officials over draft evasion
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Ukrainian servicemen fire artillery towards Russian positions near Pokrovsk, in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.
PHOTO: AFP
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KYIV - Ukrainian investigators said on Oct 4 that they found stacks of cash totalling almost US$6 million (S$7.8 million) during a raid on the home of a state official suspected of helping men dodge mobilisation.
The raid was part of a probe into an illegal scheme to register would-be draft dodgers as disabled.
With Ukraine seeking fresh recruits for the war with Russia, some who are unwilling to fight are resorting to bribery to avoid being sent to the front.
The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) swooped on the home of an official in charge of the regional medical commission in the western Khmelnitsky region and her son, a manager in Ukraine’s state pension fund.
The SBI said: “During the searches, they found almost US$6 million just in cash, in various currencies.”
Designer jewellery was also found at the officials’ home, it added.
Investigators said that at the woman’s workplace, they found a further “US$100,000, as well as a number of forged medical documents, lists of ‘draft dodgers’ with fake names and fictitious diagnoses”.
The officials were detained on Oct 3 on suspicion of fraud, money laundering and illegal enrichment, SBI spokesman Oleg Slobodian told Agence France-Presse.
The charges are punishable by up to 12 years in prison.
Lucrative schemes
During the raid, the woman tried to hide some of the money by throwing US$500,000 out of a window in bags, investigators said.
Investigators said the family owned 30 residential properties, a hotel in Ukraine, real estate in Austria, Spain and Turkey, and had almost US$2.3 million in bank accounts.
Separately, in the eastern Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Oct 4 that it had detained 13 people over a similar scheme to declare draft dodgers disabled. It said the scheme involved the head of a district medical commission in the city of Kharkiv and “the heads of various medical institutions”.
Investigators found more than US$500,000 in cash in searches, the SBU said in a statement.
It alleged that the suspects had produced fictitious documents of clients’ medical histories and inpatient treatment to show they had a disability, charging a fee of between US$2,000 and US$5,000 depending on urgency. AFP
