Kherson Court Sentences Accountant to 3 Years for ₴451K Budget Fraud

The Kherson Court of Appeal has sentenced Tamara Storozhuk, a former accountant at the Chornobaivka village council, who mistakenly paid bonuses and allowances to the council's employees.

According to Mist, the verdict was published on the website of the Unified State Register of Court Decisions.

The court found that during 2023, when calculating salaries for employees of the Chornobaivka village council, she charged inflated bonuses and surcharges, issued bonuses for unworked time, and incorrectly calculated the number of days worked when calculating and paying bonuses, financial assistance, and other payments. In total, she transferred extra UAH 228,400 from the community budget.

Storozhuk also unjustifiably paid UAH 168,060 in bonuses to the village council employees for high achievements in work, performance of particularly important work, and additional payments to the minimum wage, and transferred UAH 9,141 in vacation pay for downtime without supporting documents.

In total, she caused losses to the local budget amounting to UAH 451,088.

For this, the court sentenced Tamara Storozhuk to 3 years in prison, but released her from serving the sentence with a probationary period of 1 year. She also has to pay a fine of UAH 5,100.

Earlier, the former principal of a Kherson school, who is also a member of the district council, took advantage of martial law to illegally reward her colleagues with half a million hryvnias. In 2022, the accused, without any legal grounds, issued an order to award bonuses to 23 employees of a secondary education institution for July. The amount of bonuses for several of them was 60 thousand hryvnias.

An accountant of a village council in Kherson region was also notified of suspicion. The investigation found that the 55-year-old accused worked as an accountant in one of the village councils of Kherson district. When calculating bonuses for employees during 2023, the woman increased salaries that did not correspond to the staffing table. In addition, she unreasonably accrued bonuses and surcharges.

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