Ukraine breaks up ‘corruption scheme’ in defense sector

Le Monde reports that “Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday, August 2, that they had arrested several politicians in connection with a “large-scale corruption scheme” in the defense sector”.

These arrests happened the day after the Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities were given back (at least some of) their independence from Selensky.

These arrests must not be considered as a surprise. Such actions need long preparations, a solid case, specially against politicians, must be built before taking them in. This corruption was known since long.

The latest move of Selensky to abolish the independence of the Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities was most probably a move to protect those politicians and elite members who Selensky knew to be involved in corruption. But this move was not accepted by his Western sponsors and Selensky retracted within a week. His bill for this was now a series of arrests of corrupted officials, politicians, regional administrators, defense officials and private businessmen. The names still are not yet published. But Selensky made some new enemies.

Since years, real journalists report about the corruption in the Ukrainian defense sector. Each time Ukraine spends money (provided by its Western sponsors) on weapons, middlemen earn provisions of up to 30%. These are companies that are sometimes run by Ukrainian-US partners. The proceeds are shared with Ukrainian officials and are kept in banks in Switzerland, Monaco or the Emirates etc.

These latest arrests must now be followed with recovering the monies in those banks abroad to be returned to the countries which were the final victims of the Ukrainian corruption schemes … and to their tax payers. These arrests must be followed by measures that exclude all possibilities of corruption, full control on monies spent and complete transparency.  These measures will make the war in Ukraine less attractive – at least for some. A good step towards peace.