You're reading: Government flood relief funds go missing in Ivano Frankivsk

The head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry in Ivano-Frankivsk region, Vasyl Vartsaba, has forecast a wave of criminal cases on the embezzlement of relief funds from the national budget allocated in the wake of the flooding in the region in July 2008.

"Believe me, we'll have a lot of such criminal cases," he said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Vartsaba gave as an example a case on the embezzlement of UAH 2.5 million from the national budget. He said that the Regional Municipal Systems association had deliberately signed a fake agreement worth UAH 2.708 million with Perehynsky council on restoring the bank of the River Limnitsa.

"The director signed a fake agreement with constructors worth UAH 198,507, and UAH 2.509 million was converted into cash and embezzled," he said, adding that "there are dozens of such cases."

He said that from July 16 to July 19 alone, the Interior Ministry had opened three criminal cases concerning the embezzlement of state funds worth over UAH 770,000.

He said that Ivano-Frankivsk region had received UAH 1.622 billion from the national budget in relief aid after the 2008 flood. After checks, the police uncovered 135 crimes, and 58 people were prosecuted, including 32 state officials and representatives of local government bodies.