Members of National Corps, an ultranationalist organization, rallied on Feb. 26 near the luxurious mansion in Kozyn, a town near Kyiv, of the first deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleh Hladkovskiy, whose son Ihor has been accused by investigative journalists of embezzling money from the defense budget.
According to journalists from the investigative program Nashi Groshi, Ihor Hladkovskiy defrauded the state budget by buying military parts from Russia, smuggling them into the country, and selling them to the Ukrainian military at inflated prices.
The National Corps activists soaked fake money in red paint and set fire to it outside the mansion of the Hladkovskiy family, and let off smoke flares.
Oleh Hladkovskiy is a business associate and political ally of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
It isn’t the first time Hladkovskiy has been implicated in conflicts of interest in the defense sector. The Bohdan automobile company, which he still co-owns, has been receiving state defense contracts while Hladkovskiy occupies one of the highest posts in Ukraine’s defense hierarchy.
But Nashi Groshi’s findings could just be the tip of the iceberg, experts say. Ukraine spends billions of dollars on its defense – and most the transactions are conducted in total secrecy, with no oversight.
“I’m not surprised at all by what I’ve seen,” said Viktor Plakhuta, a defense expert and CEO of the Free Ukraine foundation. “Everybody knows what is going on, it was written about many times. It’s a rotten system hidden under the state secrecy laws.”
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