Entrepreneur from Crimea supplied equipment to occupants in Kherson region

A Crimean businesswoman was convicted for years of cooperation with the occupation structures and supplying equipment to the occupied Kherson region. She conducted business through the Russian public procurement system and worked in the interests of the aggressor state.

This is evidenced by the verdict of the Solomyansky District Court of Kyiv.

The investigation established that in August 2014, she voluntarily registered herself as a private entrepreneur under Russian law. Later, knowing about the occupation of Crimea and the ban on any economic activity related to the Russian Federation, she created an account on the Russian public procurement portal. This gave her the opportunity to work with budgetary institutions of the aggressor state and illegal so-called "authorities" in the occupied territories.

According to the prosecutor's office, while in Simferopol, the accused entered into two contracts with the pseudo-structure "Service for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Disaster Relief of the Kherson Region", which operates under the control of the occupation administration.

In March 2023, the businesswoman supplied them with switching equipment, server cabinets, and uninterruptible power supplies worth almost 2.8 million Russian rubles. In the same month, she sold laptops, phones, video cameras, and other equipment for more than 761 thousand rubles.

Information about these contracts is publicly available on the Russian public procurement website, which, according to the investigation, confirms the fact of cooperation with the occupation structures.

The defendant was charged with conducting economic activities in cooperation with the aggressor state and the illegal authorities created by it under Part 4 of Article 111-1 of the Criminal Code.

The court sentenced her to 4 years in prison, a 10-year ban on working in government or conducting business, and confiscation of all her property in favor of the state. The term of imprisonment will be counted from the moment of actual detention to execute the sentence.

During the occupation, the former director of the utility company also headed the sports sector of Kherson region and appeared in the occupiers' propaganda videos. He was sentenced to nine years for collaboration. According to the case file, before the full-scale invasion, he ran the municipal enterprise "Sport for All" and had long-standing professional contacts with sports industry workers.

Анна Бальчінос