Corruption still major issue at recruitment centers, says MP

Corruption at military recruitment centers went unnoticed for over 18 months since the start of the full-scale war for a number of reasons, and is still a major issue, MP and Secretary of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence Roman Kostenko said in an interview with Radio NV on July 28.

"If we raise the question of whether there is corruption in the recruitment centers, I think we can frankly say that there is,” he said.

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“This does not mean that it is present in all recruitment centers. It's very bad that only now – after the incident with this Odesa military officer – they started talking about it. This story is old. And it started from the very beginning of hostilities, but it was not so noticeable when the first waves [of conscripts] went independently and there were no problems with mobilization.”

Now that a certain number of servicemen are needed every month to replace the wounded and killed, and to create new brigades to strengthen the Armed Forces of Ukraine, “there are a considerable number of people in the country who want to avoid service,” Kostenko noted.

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"People are trying to avoid conscription en masse and dishonest soldiers are taking advantage of this,” he explained.

“This applies to not just military commissars, but also the employees of military commissariats. We need to check their lifestyles, what wealth they have, what property they own, who earns what, etc. I assume that now there will be many workers of military commissariats who could have earned some undeclared wealth or started to live in a different way during the full-scale invasion.”

On July 26, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the preliminary results of the inspection of the military commissions were "disappointing."

On July 27, the president announced that the comprehensive inspection of the territorial recruitment centers (former military commissariats) was coming to an end.

In an interview with Radio NV, the head of the National Security Committee, Oleksandr Novikov, said that the president, as the commander-in-chief, has the most complete information about corruption at military commissariats, and it was he who approved the decision of the National Security Council to continuously monitor the lifestyle of 1,795 heads of recruitment centers.

On July 25, the deputy head of the National Anti-Corruption Agency, Artem Sytnyk, announced that his department had begun checking the lifestyles of 102 managers and deputies of these centers.

Checks on all former heads of the recruitment centers are ongoing after the State Bureau of Investigation announced it had charged an officer of a military recruitment center in Odesa Oblast, Yevhen Borysov, with embezzlement.

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Borysov's relatives were found to own luxury cars, as well as an elite Spanish villa and office. Law enforcement suspects him of illegal enrichment in the amount of 188 million hryvnias ($5 million), as well as violations of military service.

On July 25, a court remanded Borysov into pre-trial custody for two months, with bail set at 150 million hryvnias ($4 million).

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine