You're reading: Managers of Ukrainian state arms exporter arrested for $200,000 bribe in Kazakhstan

 Two top managers of a Ukrainian state-run arms exporter are in a Kazakh prison for allegedly attempting to bribe a Defense Ministry official for assistance in receiving a lucrative arms supply contract.

The arrest
virtually coincided with the release of a new Transparency International report
on Jan. 29 that ranks both nations in the group of countries with high risks of
corruption in defense and arms trade.

Ukraine’s Foreign
Affairs Ministry confirmed the arrest of two Ukrspetsexport executives, but did
not comment on the reasons. The ministry spokesman said the two Ukrainian
nationals were arrested on Jan. 26 in Astana, the Central Asian nation’s
capital.

Two days
later, a district court “ruled to prolong their arrest to 10 days for
additional investigation,” the Ukrainian Ministry’s spokesman Yevhen Perebyinis
told the Kyiv Post. “The Ukrainian nationals haven’t been officially changed as
of yet.”

KTK Kazakh
TV channel reported that the Ukrainians were arrested for “giving a package
with a $200,000 bribe” in Astana airport to Almaz Asionov, head of the Kazakh
General Directorate of Arms. This was allegedly his cut for pushing a multimillion-dollar
deal for the supply of armored personnel carriers.

In May 2012,
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry announced a deal to supply Kazakh military forces
with armored troop carriers worth about $150 million.

Ukraine’s
weekly Zerkalo Nedeli confirmed  the information
on a $200,000 bribe through its sources in Ukrspetsexport. “Kazakh security
forces recorded the process of money delivering. The names of people, who were
handing over the money were revealed when the (Kazakh) official was arrested,”
Zerkalo Nedeli wrote on Feb. 1.

Andriy
Masalsky, the  spokesman for Ukrspetsexport,
refused to comment whether the company’s officials were arrested for
bribery. 

Oleksiy
Melnyk, a defense expert at the Razumkov think tank in Kyiv, says Ukrspetsexport
features in many international scandals.

“Perhaps
the biggest recent scandal was because of the failure of Ukraine to fulfill its
military contract with Iraq, which happened over Ukrspetsexport’s new
management’s attempt to eliminate intermediaries of the deal,” Melnyk said.

In 2009,
Ukraine made a $550 million deal to supply armored personnel carriers, planes
and related services to Iraq. The deal was frozen last year. 

“The arms
business is extremely vulnerable to corrupt schemes because of its secrecy and
the huge sums of money it deals with,” Melnyk explained.

Kyiv
Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at
[email protected]