Millions from the budget instead of ammunition were spent on the purchase of an abandoned plant in BiH — investigation

This is stated in an investigation by hromadske.

Earlier, the Ministry of Defense entered into a contract with Lviv Arsenal LLC for the supply of 100 thousand mortar shells to Ukraine for 37 million euros. Arsenal transferred part of these funds to the Slovak company Sevotech, where Oleksiy Khoroshaiev, a former official of one of the Ukroboronprom enterprises, worked as a member of the supervisory board.

Sevotech, in turn, transferred 12.5 million euros to the Slovak company WDG promet, owned by the family of the famous Croatian arms dealer Zvonka Zubak.

Ukraine never received a single mine under this contract. Instead, the Zubaks withdrew a significant part of the funds in cash and paid 5.5 million euros for the purchase of the Vitezit plant in the town of Vitez in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is confirmed by statements of cash flows in the WDG promet account, to which journalists gained access. WDG promet had no other income other than payments under contracts from Ukraine.

Vitezit was a gunpowder and ammunition factory, one of the largest in the former Yugoslavia. However, since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, the plant has been out of operation and abandoned.

Subsequently, the plant’s property was put up for sale in a lawsuit, and the Zubaks took advantage of this, spending money on it from the Ukrainian budget.

MP Serhii Taruta, who was offered to take part in the privatization of Vitezit in 2022, told hromadske that the plant did not attract any interest because almost all production lines were destroyed. This information was also confirmed by Czech businessman Kamil Babuch, who served the Zubaks as a banker and financial advisor for several years.

Author: Viacheslav Kasim