Corruption Exposed: 120 Officials Involved in Military Evasion Scandal

Over the past year, 120 officials were caught smuggling citizens across the border. The most frequent suspects were employees of the TCC, MSEC, doctors and law enforcement officers.

According to the State Bureau of Investigation, in total, in 2024, law enforcement officers investigated 287 criminal proceedings over such facts. Of these, 61 cases were sent to court.

According to detectives, the most frequent defendants in such proceedings were employees of the TCC and JV, the MSEC, doctors and law enforcement officers.

The total amount of documented bribes in criminal proceedings regarding the illegal transportation of persons liable for military service across the state border amounted to UAH 11 million 400 thousand.

In order to smuggle men abroad, the criminals organized fake diagnoses for their "clients", registered them as volunteers and drivers of humanitarian cargo, removed them from military registration through the opening of fictitious criminal proceedings, etc.

There are also widespread schemes to transfer men across the border outside checkpoints or through "fake" marriages to people with disabilities.

In October, the SBI reported exposing an organized group of doctors who helped healthy men of military age obtain medical documents that allowed the medical and social expert commission to declare them unfit for service.

Earlier, SBI officers detained an official of the Primorsky RTC and JV on suspicion of organizing a large-scale mechanism for making money from men who wanted to avoid mobilization. The scheme had been operating since July 2023. Back then, the head of the department unauthorizedly began to interfere with the work of the electronic database of the register of persons liable for military service "Oberih" and adjusted the data on 138 persons liable for military service, falsely making them unfit for service.

Ірина Глухова