The Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Andrii Kostin, resigned this Tuesday over a corruption scandal that had been causing public anger for weeks. Kostin leaves his post after the criticism leveled against him by the president himself, Volodymyr Zelensky. The media and police revealed that Tatiana Krupa, head of the State Medical Expert Commission (MSEC) in Khmelnytskyy province, had amassed a fortune in bribes to issue false disability documents, so that the beneficiary would receive a pension and, above all, to avoid being recruited by the army. Fifty of these were officials of the Khmelnitsky prosecutor’s office. Kostin has justified his departure because he has not known how to deal with the situation.
There is a lot of tension in Ukrainian society due to corruption, it is the escape valve for anger and exhaustion after two years and eight months of war. It is common in the interviews that Morning Express has conducted this year with civilians that they use corruption as the reason why they want to avoid joining the ranks. And cases like the one known on October 5 in Khmelnytskyy are the ones that irritate the population the most. The Security Services of Ukraine (SSU) reported that day that they had found 6 million dollars (5.5 million euros) in cash in a search of Krupa’s home. In his office they also found $104,000 in cash deposited on two days in October to seal disability documents for 30 people. This means that the bribe per person was up to 3,600 euros.
The middle Net Censorrevealed that 49 of the beneficiaries are officials of the provincial prosecutor’s office. These disability documents allowed these people to receive subsidies of up to 17,000 euros per year, according to Net Censor But the main purpose is to save yourself from going to the front. Some cases predate the war but most are recent. He modus operandi It is similar to the one that many men use to leave the country or to save themselves from being recruited: by paying the bribe, an MSEC official delivers a disability document for a direct relative and the beneficiary is named the person supposedly responsible for this person. dependent. This frees him from military mobilization and raises less suspicion than if he himself has to present a disability document.
Also in Mikolaiv
The police also found $450,000 in cash on Tuesday at the residence of the head of the MSEC in Mikolaiv province. The attorney general’s office requested the registration of the home because it had detected that the accused had acquired three new homes and donated them to her son.
Bribes can occur at the MSEC but also at army recruiting offices, for example, to get a medical examination to indicate that that person is not suitable for military service. In 2023, the case of the head of the Odessa enlistment office, Yevgen Borisov, was heard, who was discovered that during the war he had acquired a chalet in Marbella for 2.7 million euros. In August 2023, Zelensky relieved all the heads of the provincial recruitment offices due to the accumulation of complaints.
Kostin’s fall is the second most important during the war in the Ukrainian judiciary. Chief Justice Vsevolod KniazievHe was arrested in 2023 after being accused of receiving a bribe of 2.5 million euros. In September, Gizo Uglava, deputy director of the Anti-Corruption Office, was dismissed because an alleged leak by his team of confidential information to those under investigation had been detected.
The prosecutor general was already on the tightrope since last summer when Ukrainian media reported that the partner of the deputy prosecutor general was the recent owner of real estate assets 10 times higher than his annual income. During the war, donations to wives or mothers of property that belonged to their husbands or children have skyrocketed.
Zelensky acknowledged this Tuesday that the system of bribery in the Administration is widespread: “It is not just about prosecutors. “There are hundreds of cases of unjustified disability in the customs service, the treasury, social security and local administrations.” The president has indicated that medical commissions must be “abolished” and replaced by a centralized digital verification system.
This scandal is also a reflection of kyiv’s commitment to reform the country to bring it to the European Union, but above all of the massive evasion in Ukraine to avoid joining the ranks. The Ukrainian army suffers from a serious troop deficit, as military personnel stationed in Donetsk explained to this newspaper a few days ago. The lack of hope of reversing the negative situation on the front has also caused an alarming increase in desertions in the Armed Forces. The attorney general’s office has registered almost 100,000 escapes in the army so far during the war, half of them in 2024.