08/02/2025August 2, 2025Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies say they’ve uncovered corruption related to drone procurement
Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies said Saturday that they had uncovered a major graft scheme that procured military drones and signal jamming systems at inflated prices.
The development comes just two days after the agencies’ independence was restored following major protests, prompting a policy reversal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The independence of Ukraine’s anti-graft investigators and prosecutors, NABU and SAPO, was reinstated by parliament on Thursday after a move to take it away resulted in the country’s biggest protests since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
In a statement published by both NABU and SAPO on social media, the agencies said they had caught a current lawmaker, two officials and some national guard personnel taking bribes.
“The essence of the scheme was to conclude state contracts with supplier companies at deliberately inflated prices,” it said, adding that the offenders had received kickbacks of up to 30% of a contract’s cost. Four people have so far been arrested.
“There can only be zero tolerance for corruption, clear teamwork to expose corruption and, as a result, a just sentence,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.
Earlier this week, Zelenskyy had to row back plans to give his government more powers and independence of the country’s anti-corruption agencies.
This climb down came of thousands of people took to the streets of Kyiv to express anger the Ukrainian president’s decision to have the country’s anti-corruption bodies under the control of state prosecutors.
Russian infiltration of Ukraine’s anti-graft bodies unproven
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