Company with ties to Moscow receives money for ammunition from Defense Ministry — investigation

This is stated in the investigation by hromadske.

The Croatian company WDG promet had two agreements related to Ukrainian defense procurement. The first was for 100 thousand mortar shells. In November 2022, the Ministry of Defense signed an agreement with Lviv Arsenal LLC, and the latter entered into an agreement with Slovakian company Sevotech.

In turn, Sevotech had an agreement with WDG promet, which belongs to the family of the famous Croatian arms dealer Zvonka Zubak.

Later, in December, WDG promet also signed a direct contract with the Ministry of Defense for the supply of 30 thousand 125 mm tank rounds and received a 10% prepayment for this,  which is more than 3 million euros. In total, the Croats received more than 14 million euros under both contracts.

However, Ukraine has not yet received any tank shots or mortar shells. Instead, it turned out that WDG promet had connections in Moscow. The abbreviation WDG stands for Winsley Defense Group. For decades, Zvonka Zubak's partner in this group was the Czech businessman Petr Perníčka. hromadske journalists discovered that in October 2023, in a Czech court, Perníčka openly stated that the archives of one of the group’s key companies, Winsley Finance Limited, were still stored in Moscow.

The court of the city of Ústí nad Labem considered the bankruptcy case of Petr Perníčka. When the judge asked Perníčka where exactly the Winsley Finance Limited archive was located, he replied: “In Moscow, near the Belorussky railway station. I don't know the exact address yet. There are not only documents of this company, but also others. As a former director of the company, I can access the archive in Moscow."

When asked by the court how the debtor would find out where the archive was located if he wanted to open it, Perníčka said: “My friends will pass this information to me, and I will have to go there personally.”

The interests of Petr Perníčka were defended in this court by Czech lawyer Karl Witchens. A week before the hearing, during a meeting with a hromadske journalist, he introduced himself as a representative of WDG promet and Zubaks.

Thus, a company from a group that stores its primary documents in Moscow received millions of euros from Ukraine more than a year ago. Ukraine has not yet received any ammunition from the WDG promet.

Author: Viacheslav Kasim