The Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office has filed charges against the CEO and engineer of a private company, as well as an official of the Department of Education of the Podilskyi Regional State Administration. They are suspected of embezzling budget funds during the overhaul of shelters and protective structures in two schools.
This was reported by the press service of the department.
The investigation established that in 2023, the CEO of the contractor company colluded with an engineer. They submitted estimates of work with a pre-inflated cost of materials to the Department of Education of the Podil Regional State Administration.
“An official of the Education Department, knowing about the overestimation of the cost, approved the estimate without properly monitoring the prices of these materials. As a result, 450 thousand hryvnias were overpaid from the capital's budget for the work carried out, which were actually taken over by officials of the contractor company,” the report says.
The actions of the general director and the engineer were qualified by law enforcement officers as embezzlement of budget funds (Part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), the actions of the Education Department official as aiding and abetting the embezzlement of budget funds (Part 5 of Article 27, Part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The maximum penalty for the articles is up to eight years of imprisonment with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for a term of up to three years.
It was previously reported that the Bureau of Economic Security discovered an overstated cost of work during the construction of a shelter in one of the schools in the Pechersk district. This is a large-scale infrastructure project that is to be implemented by the end of 2026 with funding from the local budget. The contract was reduced by more than 14 million hryvnias.