{"id":1269,"date":"2025-08-05T10:46:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T10:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2025-08-08T13:50:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:50:40","slug":"ukrainian-officials-busted-in-large-scale-military-bribery-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/05\/ukrainian-officials-busted-in-large-scale-military-bribery-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian officials busted in \u2018large-scale\u2019 military bribery scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Several high-ranking suspects pocketed up to 30% in kickbacks on drone and electronic warfare contracts, anti-corruption watchdogs claim<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Several senior Ukrainian officials have been detained on suspicion of receiving up to 30% in kickbacks from military contracts, anti-corruption agencies have announced. The arrests came just days after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky was forced to abandon his attempts to restrict the independence of the anti-graft agencies.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Saturday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor\u2019s Office (SAPO) said they had uncovered a <em>\u201clarge-scale\u201d<\/em> corruption scheme involving contracts for the purchase of drones and electronic warfare systems for the Ukrainian army.<\/p>\n<p>Ukrainian media has identified three of the four suspects \u2013 Aleksey Kuznetsov, an MP\u00a0with Zelensky\u2019s Servant of the People party, former Lugansk Governor Sergey Gayday, and Rubezhansky district head Andrey Yurchenko.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2024 and 2025, the group allegedly created a scheme to\u00a0steal budget funds allocated by local governments for defense needs. One part of the scheme involved awarding a contract for electronic warfare systems at an intentionally inflated price, with the group receiving illegal benefits worth 30% of the contract amount.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n        <span><strong>Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<figure>\n            <img src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"The Ukrainian parliament in session, February 6, 2024.\" class=\"lazyload\" data-src=\"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/688b64ca85f54073466e3d7f.jpg\"><figcaption><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/russia\/622326-ukraine-reverses-nabu-crackdown\/\">Ukraine backtracks on new law targeting anti-graft agencies<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>A separate contract for FPV drones, worth around $240,000, was allegedly overpriced by around $80,000, with the company\u2019s officials later handing over kickbacks to members of the group, the investigators said.<\/p>\n<p>The same day, Zelensky stated that he had met with the heads of NABU and SAPO to discuss the scandal, calling it <em>\u201cabsolutely immoral\u201d<\/em> and thanked the agencies for their good work.<\/p>\n<p>Two weeks earlier Zelensky had attempted to bring both bodies under government control only for street protests to force him to sign off on their independence last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several high-ranking suspects pocketed up to 30% in kickbacks on drone and electronic warfare contracts, anti-corruption watchdogs claim Several senior [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}