A deputy minister of economic development and trade in Volodymyr Groysman's Cabinet of Ministers has been detained on suspicion of high treason.
The case concerns the signing of the deliberately unprofitable contract on the manufacturing and supply of an artillery shell production facility worth 16.5m dollars. As a result of the illegal deal, an advance payment of over 8.2m dollars was transferred to the accounts of fake offshore companies and later appropriated by scheme participants. A foreign company has not supplied equipment to Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said.
On 22 October, the former official was detained at Boryspil airport.
Although the SBU did not name the official, it is likely to be Yuriy Brovchenko who was the deputy economic minister in charge of defence from July 2016 to September 2019.
The director of the state-owned company Bezpeka and a representative of the foreign company were detained in Kyiv on 17 October.