“Anti-corruption bodies claim to have exposed the scheme of systematic bribery of top officials of the State Border Service of Ukraine.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
Source: NABU and SAP
Literally: “Under the procedural guidance of the SAP prosecutor, detectives reported the suspicion to a former top official and a current official of the State Border Service of Ukraine, who were exposed for systematically receiving illegal benefits for facilitating the unimpeded crossing of the state border.”
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Details: According to the message, it is about:
the general, former head of the State Border Guard Service (Serhii Deineko, about the searches of which the UP reported earlier);
head of the checkpoint department of the State Border Service;
former official of the State Border Service.
The actions of the suspects are classified under part 4 of Art. 27, Part 4 of Art. 368 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
As part of the pre-trial investigation, it was established that in 2023, with the assistance of State Border Service officials, a group of people organized the illegal transportation of cigarettes across the state border of Ukraine to the EU.
For their illegal activities, these persons used vehicles registered on the territory of the Czech Republic and Austria, on which they installed special license plates similar to diplomatic ones.
The passengers of such cars were holders of diplomatic passports — members of the families of Ukrainian diplomats in Europe. This made it possible to avoid inspection of cars by border and customs authorities of EU countries.
In turn, the officials of the Border Service ensured unhindered crossing of the border from/to Ukraine. It is documented that during July – November 2023, border guards received about 204,000 euros of illegal benefits for the passage of 68 cars (3,000 euros for each vehicle).
In addition, the investigation found out that officials of the State Border Service previously served together with diplomats, whose relatives later became participants in this scheme.
The investigation is ongoing.